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PRICE ONE DOLLAR 



DEAD MEN 

TELL NO TALES 

by : , 

E. W. HORNUNG 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 



Dead Men Tell No Tales 


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' 


Love on the Ocean 


It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and 
Bendigo, when ship after ship went out black 
with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce 
home with a bale or two of wool, and hardly 
hands enough to reef topsails in a gale. Nor 
was this the worst ; for not the crew only, but, 
in many cases, captain and officers as well, 
would join in the stampede to the diggings ; 
and we found Hobson’s Bay the congested 
asylum of all manner of masterless and deserted 
vessels. I have a lively recollection of our skip- 
per’s indignation when the pilot informed him 
of this disgraceful fact. Within a fortnight, 
however, I met the good man face to face upon 
the diggings. It is but fair to add that the 
Lady Jermyn lost every officer and man in the 
same way, and that the captain did obey 
tradition to the extent of being the last to quit 
his ship. Nevertheless, of all who sailed by 
her in January, I alone was ready to return at 
the beginning of the following July. 

I had been to Ballarat. I had given the 
thing a trial. For the most odious weeks I 
had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats ; 
and I had actually failed to make running ex- 
penses. That, however, will surprise you the 
less when I pause to declare that I have paid 
3 


Dead Men Tel! No Tales 


as much as four shillings and sixpence for half 
a loaf of execrable bread ; that my mate and I, 
between us, seldom took more than a few 
pennyweights of gold-dust in any one day ; and 
never once struck pick into nugget, big or lit- 
tle, though we had the mortification of inspect- 
ing the “ mammoth masses ” of which we 
found the papers full on landing, and which 
had brought the gold-fever to its height during 
our very voyage. With me, however, as with 
many a young fellow who had turned his back 
on better things, the malady was short-lived. 
We expected to make our fortunes out of hand, 
and we had reckoned without the vermin and 
the villainy which rendered us more than ever 
impatient of delay. In my fly-blown blankets 
I dreamt of London until I hankered after my 
chambers and my club more than after much 
fine gold. Never shall I forget my first hot 
bath on getting back to Melbourne ; it cost five 
shillings, but it was worth five pounds, and is 
altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of 
Australia. 

There was, however, one slice of luck in 
store for me. I found the dear old Lady Jer- 
ftiyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new 
captain, a new crew, a handful of passengers 

4 


Love on the Ocean 


(chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargo at 
all. I felt none the less at home when I 
stepped over her familiar side. 

In the cuddy we were only five, but a more 
uneven quintette I defy you to convene. There 
was a young fellow named Ready, packed out 
for his health, and hurrying home to die 
among friends. There was an outrageously 
lucky digger, another invalid, for he would 
drink nothing but champagne with every meal 
and at any minute of the day, and I have seen 
him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the 
hour together. Miss Denison was our only 
lady, and her step-father, with whom she was 
travelling, was the one man of distinction on 
board. He was a Portuguese of sixty or 
thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name ; 
at first it was incredible to me that he had no 
title, so noble was his bearing ; but very soon I 
realised that he was one of those to whom ad- 
ventitious honours can add no lustre. He 
treated Miss Denison as no parent ever treated 
a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite 
beautiful to watch, and not a little touching in 
the light of the circumstances under which 
they were travelling together. The girl had 
gone straight from school to her step-father's 
5 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


estate on the Zambesi, where, a few months 
later, her mother had died of the malaria. Un- 
able to endure the place after his wife’s death, 
Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, 
there to seek fresh fortune with results as in- 
different as my own. He was now taking Miss 
Denison back to England, to make her home 
with other relatives, before he himself returned 
to Africa (as he once told me) to lay his bones 
beside those of his wife. I hardly know which 
of the pair I see more plainly as I write — the 
young girl with her soft eyes and her sunny 
hair, or the old gentleman with the erect 
though wasted figure, the noble forehead, the 
steady eye, the parchment skin, the white im- 
perial, and the eternal cigarette between his 
shrivelled lips. 

No need to say that I came more in contact 
with the young girl. She was not less charm- 
ing in my eyes because she provoked me great- 
ly as I came to know her intimately. She had 
many irritating faults. Like most young per- 
sons of intellect and inexperience, she was 
hasty and intolerant in nearly all her judg- 
ments, and rather given to being critical in a 
crude way. She was very musical, playing the 
guitar and singing in a style that made our 
6 


Love on the Ocean 


shipboard concerts vastly superior to the aver- 
age of their order ; but I have seen her shud- 
der at the efforts of less gifted folks who were 
also doing their best ; and it was the same in 
other directions where her superiority was less 
specific. The faults which are most exasper- 
ating in another are, of course, one’s own 
faults ; and I confess that I was very critical of 
Eva Denison’s criticisms. Then she had a lit- 
tle weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious 
egotism in conversation, and I itched to tell 
her so. I felt so certain that the girl had a fine 
character underneath, which would rise to 
noble heights in stress or storm: all the more 
would I long now to take her in hand and 
mould her in little things, and anon to take 
her in my arms just as she was. The latter 
feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, 
I had endured what is euphemistically called a 
“ disappointment ” already ; and, not being a 
complete coxcomb, I had no intention of 
courting a second. 

Yet, when I write of Eva Denison, I am 
like to let my pen outrun my tale. I lay the 
pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring 
in my ears, with my own contradictious com- 
ments, that I was doomed so soon to repent; 

7 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

a hundred visions of her start to my eyes ; and 
there is the trade-wind singing in the rigging, 
and loosening a tress of my darling’s hair, till 
it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the tropic 
sun. There, it is out ! I have called her what 
she was to be in my heart ever after. Yet at 
the time I must argue with her — with her ! 
When all my courage should have gone to 
love-making, I was plucking it up to sail as 
near as I might to plain remonstrance ! I little 
dreamt how the ghost of every petty word was 
presently to return and torture me. 

So it is that I can see her and hear her now 
on a hundred separate occasions — beneath the 
awning — beneath the stars — on deck — below 
— at noon or night — but plainest of all in the 
evening of the day we signalled the Island of 
Ascension, at the close of that last concert on 
the quarter-deck. The watch are taking down 
the extra awning ; they are removing the bunt- 
ing and the footlights. The lanterns are 
trailed forward before they are put out ; from 
the break of the poop we watch the vivid shift- 
ing patch of deck that each lights up on its 
way. The stars are very sharp in the vast vio- 
let dome above our masts; they shimmer on 
the sea ; and our trucks describe minute orbits 
3 


Love on the Ocean 


among the stars, for the trades have yet to fail 
us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the 
gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. 
The peace of God broods upon His waters. 
No jarring note offends the ear. In the fore- 
castle a voice is humming a song of Eva Deni- 
son’s that has caught the fancy of the men ; the 
young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty 
minutes since — who sang it again and again 
to please the crew — she alone is at war with our 
little world — she alone would head a mutiny if 
she could. 

“ I hate the captain ! ” she says again. 

“ My dear Miss Denison ! ” I begin ; for she 
has always been severe upon our bluff old man, 
and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone 
which makes me invariably take his part. 
Coarse he may be, and not one whom the own- 
ers would have chosen to command the Lady 
Jermyn; a good seaman none the less, whp 
brought us round the Horn in foul weather 
without losing stitch or stick. I think of the 
ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins, on deck 
day and night for our sakes, and once more I 
must needs take his part; but Miss Denison 
stops me before I can get out another word. 

“ I am not dear, and I’m not yours,” she 
9 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


cries. “ I’m only a school-girl — you have all 
but told me so before to-day ! If I were a man 
— if I were you — I should tell Captain Harris 
what I thought of him ! ” 

“ Why ? What has he done now ? ” 

“ Now? You know how rude he was to 
poor Mr. Ready this very afternoon ! ” 

It was true. He had been very rude indeed. 
But Ready also had been at fault. It may be 
that I was always inclined to take an opposite 
view, but I felt bound to point this out, and at 
any cost. 

“ You mean when Ready asked him if we 
were out of our course? I must say I thought 
it was a silly question to put. It was the same 
the other evening, about the cargo. If the 
skipper says we’re in ballast why not believe 
him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about 
mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table? Cap- 
tains are always touchy about that sort of 
thing. I wasn’t surprised at his letting out.” 

My poor love stares at me in the starlight. 
Her great eyes flash their scorn. Then she 
gives a little smile — and then a little nod — 
more scornful than all the rest. 

“ You never are surprised, are you, Mr. 
Cole?” says she. “You were not surprised 
io 


Love on the Ocean 


when the wretch used horrible language in 
front of me ! You were not surprised when it 
was a — dying man — whom he abused ! ” 

I try to soothe her. I agree heartily with her 
disgust at the epithets employed in her hearing, 
and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper. 
But I ask her to make allowances for a rough, 
uneducated man, rather clumsily touched upon 
his tender spot. I shall conciliate her pres- 
ently; the divine pout (so childish it was!) is 
fading from her lips; the starlight is on the 
tulle and lace and roses of her pretty evening 
dress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete 
flounces ; and I am watching her, ay, and wor- 
shipping her, though I do not know it yet. 
And as we stand there comes another snatch 
from the forecastle: — 

“ What will you do, love, when I am going, 

With white sail flowing, 

The seas beyond? 

What will you do, love ” 

“ They may make the most of that song,” 
says Miss Denison grimly ; “ it’s the last they’ll 
have from me. Get up as many more con- 
certs as you like. I won’t sing at another un- 
less it’s in the fo’c’sle. I’ll sing to the men, but 


1 1 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


not to Captain Harris. He didn’t put in an 
appearance to-night. He shall not have an- 
other chance of insulting me.” 

Was it her vanity that was wounded after 
all? 

“ You forget,” said I, “ that you would not 
answer when he addressed you at dinner.” 

“ I should think I wouldn’t, after the way 
he spoke to Mr. Ready ; and he too agitated to 
come to table, poor fellow ! ” 

“ Still, the captain felt the open slight.” 

“ Then he shouldn’t have used such lan- 
guage in front of me.” 

“ Your father felt it, too, Miss Denison.” 

I hear nothing plainer than her low but 
quick reply : 

“ Mr. Cole, my father has been dead many, 
many years; he died before I can remember. 
That man only married my poor mother. He 
sympathizes with Captain Harris — against 
me; no father would do that. Look at them 
together now! And you take his side, too; 
oh ! I have no patience with any of you — ex- 
cept poor Mr. Ready in his berth.” 

“ But you are not going.” 

“ Indeed I am. I am tired of you all.” 

And she was gone with angry tears for 


12 


Love on the Ocean 


which I blamed myself as I fell to pacing the 
weather side of the poop — and so often after- 
wards ! So often, and with such unavailing 
bitterness ! 

Senhor Santos and the captain were in con- 
versation by the weather rail. I fancied poor 
old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I 
wished he had better cause. The Portuguese, 
however, saluted me with his customary cour- 
tesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle 
in his steady eye. 

“ Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole ? ” 
he inquired in his all but perfect English. 

“ More or less,” said I ruefully. 

He gave the shrug of his country — that deli- 
cate gesture which is done almost entirely 
with the back — a subtlety beyond the power of 
British shoulders. 

“ The senhora is both weelful and pivish,” 
said he, mixing the two vowels which (with 
the aspirate) were his only trouble with our 
tongue. “ It is great grif to me to see her 
growing so unlike her sainted mother ! ” 

He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers for- 
sake the cigarette they were rolling to make 
the sacred sign upon his breast. He was al- 
ways smoking one cigarette and making an- 

13 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


other ; as he lit the new one the glow fell upon 
a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny 
crucifix inlaid in mosaic. So the religious cast 
of Senhor Santos was brought twice home to 
me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I 
had often been struck by it before. And it de- 
pressed me to think that so sweet a child as 
Eva Denison should have spoken harshly of so 
good a man as her step-father, simply because 
he had breadth enough to sympathise with a 
coarse old salt like Captain Harris. 

I turned in, however, and I cannot say the 
matter kept me awake in the separate state- 
room which was one luxury of our empty sa- 
loon. Alas ! I was a heavy sleeper then. 


14 


CHAPTER II 


THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO 

“ Wake up, Cole ! The ship’s on fire ! ” 

It was young Ready’s hollow voice, as cool, 
however, as though he were telling me I was 
late for breakfast. I started up and sought 
him wildly in the darkness. 

“ You’re joking,” was my first thought and 
utterance ; for now he was lighting my candle, 
and blowing out the match with a care that 
seemed in itself a contradiction. 

“ I wish I were,” he answered. “ Listen to 
that ! ” 

He pointed to my cabin ceiling ; it quivered 
and creaked ; and all at once I was as a deaf 
man healed. 

One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this 
day it passes me how even I could have slept 
an instant in the abnormal din which I now 
heard raging above my head. Sea-boots 
stamped ; bare feet pattered ; men bawled ; 
women shrieked ; shouts of terror drowned the 
roar of command. 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Have we long to last ? ” I asked, as I leaped 
for my clothes. 

“ Long enough for you to dress comfort- 
ably. Steady, old man! It’s only just been 
discovered; they may get it under. The 
panic’s the worst part at present, and we’re out 
of that.” 

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly I put 
the question ; his answer was reassuring. Miss 
Denison was with her step-father on the poop. 
“ And both of ’em as cool as cucumbers,” add- 
ed Ready. 

They could not have been cooler than this 
young man, with death at the bottom of his 
bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type 
which is all muscle and no constitution; ath- 
letes one year, dead men the next; but until 
this moment the athlete had been to me a mere 
and incredible tradition. In the afternoon I 
had seen his lean knees totter under the cap- 
tain’s fire. Now, at midnight — the exact time 
by my watch — it was as if his shrunken limbs 
had expanded in his clothes ; he seemed hardly 
to know his own flushed face, as he caught 
sight of it in my mirror. 

“ By Jove ! ” said he, “ this has put me in a 
fine old fever ; but I don’t know when I felt in 
16 


The Mysterious Cargo 

His tone made me draw him to the rail. 

“ But how do you know? You didn’t have 
another look, did you ? ” 

“ Lots of looks — at the stars. He couldn’t 
keep me from consulting them ; and I’m just as 
certain of it as I’m certain that we’ve a cargo 
aboard which we’re none of us supposed to 
know anything about.” 

The latter piece of gossip was, indeed, all 
over the ship ; but this allusion to it struck me 
as foolishly irrelevant and frivolous. As to 
the other matter, I suggested that the officers 
would have had more to say about it than 
Ready, if there had been anything in it. 

“ Officers be damned ! ” cried our con- 
sumptive, with a sound man’s vigour. 
“ They’re ordinary seamen dressed up ; I don’t 
believe they’ve a second mate’s certificate be- 
tween them, and they’re frightened out of 
their souls.” 

“ Well, anyhow, the skipper isn’t that.” 

“ No ; he’s drunk ; he can shout straight, but 
you should hear him try to speak.” 

I made my way aft without rejoinder. “ In- 
valid’s pessimism,” was my private comment. 
And yet the sick man was whole for the time 
being; the virile spirit was once more master 

19 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


of the recreant members ; and it was with il- 
logical relief that I found those I sought stand- 
ing almost unconcernedly beside the binnacle. 

My little friend was, indeed, pale enough, 
and her eyes great with dismay ; but she stood 
splendidly calm, in her travelling cloak and 
bonnet, and with all my soul I hailed the hardi- 
hood with which I had rightly credited my 
love. Yes! I loved her then. It had come 
home to me at last, and I no longer denied it 
in my heart. In my innocence and my joy I 
rather blessed the fire for showing me her true 
self and my own ; and there I stood, loving her 
openly with my eyes (not to lose another in- 
stant), and bursting to tell her so with my lips. 

But there also stood Senhor Santos, almost 
precisely as I had seen him last, cigarette, tie- 
pin, and all. He wore an overcoat, however, 
and leaned upon a massive ebony cane, while 
he carried his daughter’s guitar in its case, ex- 
actly as though they were waiting for a train. 
Moreover, I thought that for the first time he 
was regarding me with no very favouring 
glance. 

“ You don’t think it serious? ” I asked him 
abruptly, my heart still bounding with the most 
incongruous joy. 


20 


The Mysterious Cargo 

He gave me his ambiguous shrug ; and then, 
“ A fire at sea is surely sirrious,” said he. 

“ Where did it break out ? ” 

“ No one knows ; it may have come of your 
concert/’ 

“ But they are getting the better of it ? ” 

“ They are working wonders so far, senhor.” 

“ You see, Miss Denison,” I continued 
ecstatically, “ our rough old diamond of a skip- 
per is the right man in the right place after all. 
A tight man in a tight place, eh ? ” and I 
laughed like an idiot in their calm grave faces. 

“ Senhor Cole is right,” said Santos, “ al- 
though his ’ilarity sims a leetle out of place. 
But you must never spik against Captain ’Ar- 
rees again, menina.” 

“ I never will,” the poor child said ; yet I saw 
her wince whenever the captain raised that 
hoarse voice of his in more and more blasphe- 
mous exhortation; and I began to fear with 
Ready that the man was drunk. 

My eyes were still upon my darling, devour- 
ing her, revelling in her, when suddenly I saw 
her hand twitch within her step-father’s arm. 
It was an answering start to one on his part. 
The cigarette was snatched from his lips. 
There was a commotion forward, and a cry 
came aft, from mouth to mouth : 


21 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ The flames ! The flames ! ” 

J I turned, and caught their reflection on the 
white column of smoke and steam. I ran for- 
ward, and saw them curling and leaping in the 
hell-mouth of the hold. 

The quarter-deck now staged a lurid scene : 
that blazing trap-door in its midst; and each 
man there a naked demon madly working to 
save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast 
the deck-pump was being ceaselessly worked 
by relays of the passengers ; dry blankets were 
passed forward, soaking blankets were passed 
aft, and flung flat into the furnace one after an- 
other. These did more good than the pure 
water: the pillar of smoke became blacker, 
denser : we were at a crisis ; a sudden hush de- 
noted it ; even our hoarse skipper stood dumb. 

I had rushed down into the waist of the ship 
— blushing for my delay — and already I was 
tossing blankets with the rest. Looking up in 
an enforced pause, I saw Santos whispering in 
the skipper’s ear, with the expression of a 
sphinx, but no lack of foreign gesticulation — 
behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces, 
parted at that instant by two more figures, as 
wild and strange as any in that wild strange 
scene. One was our luckless lucky digger, 
22 


The Mysterious Cargo 

the other a gigantic Zambesi nigger, who for 
days had been told off to watch him ; this was 
the servant (or rather the slave) of Senhor 
Santos. 

The digger planted himself before the cap- 
tain. His face was reddened by a fire as con- 
suming as that within the bowels of our gal- 
lant ship. He had a huge, unwieldy bundle 
under either arm. 

“ Plain question — plain answer,” we heard 

him stutter. “ Is there any chance of 

saving this ship ? ” 

His adjectives were too foul for print; they 
were given with such a special effort at dis- 
tinctness, however, that I was smiling one in- 
stant, and giving thanks the next that Eva 
Denison had not come forward with her guar- 
dian. Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged 
a glance with Senhor Santos, and I think we 
all felt that he was going to tell us the truth. 

He told it in two words — 

“ Very little.” 

Then the first individual tragedy was enact- 
ed before every eye. With a yell the drunken 
maniac rushed to the rail. The nigger was at 
his heels — he was too late. Uttering another 
and more piercing shriek, the madman was 

23 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


overboard at a bound ; one of his bundles pre- 
ceded him; the other dropped like a cannon- 
ball on the deck. 

The nigger caught it up and carried it for- 
ward to the captain. 

Harris held up his hand. We were still be- 
fore we had fairly found our tongues. His 
words did run together a little, but he was not 
drunk. 

“ Men and women,” said he, “ what I told 
that poor devil is gospel truth ; but I didn’t tell 
him we’d no chance of saving our lives, did I ? 
Not me, because we have! Keep your heads 
and listen to me. There’s two good boats on 
the davits amidships; the chief will take one, 
the second officer the other ; and there ain’t no 
reason why every blessed one of you shouldn’t 
sleep at Ascension to-morrow night. As for 
me, let me see every soul off of my ship and 
perhaps I may follow; but by the God that 
made you, look alive! Mr. Arnott — Mr. Mc- 
Clellan — man them boats and lower away. 
You can’t get quit o’ the ship too soon, an’ I 
don’t mind tellin’ you why. I’ll tell you the 
worst, an’ then you’ll know. There’s been a 
lot o’ gossip goin’, gossip about my cargo. I 
give out as I’d none but ship’s stores and bal- 
24 


The Mysterious Cargo 

last, an’ I give out a lie. I don’t mind tellin’ 
you now. I give out a cussed lie, but I give it 
out for the good o’ the ship! What was the 
use o’ frightenin’ folks ? But where’s the 
sense in keepin’ it back now? We have a bit 
of a cargo,” shouted Harris ; “ and it’s gun- 
powder — every damned ton of it ! ” 

The effect of this announcement may be im- 
agined ; my hand has not the cunning to repro- 
duce it on paper ; and if it had, it would shrink 
from the task. Mild men became brutes, 
brutal men devils, women — God help them! — 
shrieking beldams for the most part. Never 
shall I forget them with their streaming hair, 
their screaming open mouths, and the cruel 
ascending fire glinting on their starting eye- 
balls ! 

Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-lad- 
ders ; pell-mell they raced amidships past that 
yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling 
through the seams of the crackling deck ; they 
slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and 
the wonder is that none plunged headlong into 
the flames. A handful remained on the poop, 
cowering and undone with terror. Upon 
these turned Captain Harris, as Ready and I, 
stemming the torrent of maddened humanity, 
regained the poop ourselves. 

25 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ For’ard with ye ! ” yelled the skipper. 
“ The powder’s underneath you in the laza- 
rette ! ” 

They were gone like hunted sheep. And 
now abaft the flaming hatchway there were 
only we four surviving saloon passengers, the 
captain, his steward, the Zambesi negro, and 
the quartermaster at the wheel. The steward 
and the black I observed putting stores aboard 
the captain’s gig as it overhung the water from 
the stern davits. 

“ Now, gentlemen,” said Harris to the two 
of us, “ I must trouble you to step forward with 
the rest. Senhor Santos insists on taking his 
chance along with the young lady in my gig. 
I’ve told him the risk, but he insists, and the 
gig’ll hold no more.” 

“ But she must have a crew, and I can row. 
For God’s sake take me, captain ! ” cried I ; for 
Eva Denison sat weeping in her deck chair, 
and my heart bled faint at the thought of leav- 
ing her, I who loved her so, and might die 
without ever telling her my love! Harris, 
however, stood firm. 

“ There’s that quartermaster and my stew- 
ard, and Jose the nigger,” said he. “ That’s 
quite enough, Mr. Cole, for I ain’t above an 
26 


The Mysterious Cargo 

oar myself ; but, by God, I’m skipper o’ this 
here ship, and I’ll skip her as long as I remain 
aboard ! ” 

I saw his hand go to his belt ; I saw the pis- 
tols stuck there for mutineers. I looked at 
Santos. He answered me with his neutral 
shrug, and, by my soul, he struck a match and 
lit a cigarette in that hour of life and death ! 
Then last I looked at Ready ; and he leant in- 
vertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from 
his exertions in regaining the poop, a dying 
man once more. I pointed out his piteous state. 

“ At least,” I whispered, “ you won’t refuse 
to take him ? ” 

“ Will there be anything to take? ” said the 
captain brutally. 

Santos advanced leisurely, and puffed his 
cigarette over the poor wasted and exhausted 
frame. 

“ It is for you to decide, captain,” said he 
cynically ; “ but this one will make no deefer- 
ence. Yes, I would take him. It will not be 
far,” he added, in a tone that was not the less 
detestable for being lowered. 

“ Take them both ! ” moaned little Eva, put- 
ting in her first and last sweet word. 

“ Then we all drown, Evasinha,” said her 
step-father. “ It is impossible.” 

2 7 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ We’re too many for her as it is,” said the 
captain. “ So for’ard with ye, Mr. Cole, be- 
fore it’s too late.” 

But my darling’s brave word for me had 
fired my blood, and I turned with equal resolu- 
tion on Harris and on the Portuguese. “I 
will go like a lamb,” said I, “ if you will first 
give me five minutes’ conversation with Miss 
Denison. Otherwise I do not go; and as for 
the gig, you may take me or leave me, as you 
choose.” 

“ What have you to say to her? ” asked San- 
tos, coming up to me, and again lowering his 
voice. 

I lowered mine still more. “ That I love 
her ! ” I answered in a soft ecstasy. “ That she 
may remember how I loved her, if I die ! ” 

His shoulders shrugged a cynical acquies- 
cence. 

“ By all mins, senhor ; there is no harm in 
that.” 

I was at her side before another word could 
pass his withered lips. 

“ Miss Denison, will you grant me five min- 
utes’ conversation ? It may be the last that we 
shall ever have together ! ” 

Uncovering her face, she looked at me with 
a strange terror in her great eyes ; then with a 
28 


The Mysterious Cargo 

questioning light that was yet more strange, 
for in it there was a wistfulness I could not 
comprehend. She suffered me to take her 
hand, however, and to lead her unresisting to 
the weather rail. 

“ What is it you have to say ? ” she asked me 
in her turn. “ What is it that you — think ? ” 

Her voice fell as though she must have the 
truth. 

“ That we have all a very good chance,” said 
I heartily. 

“ Is that all ? ” cried Eva, and my heart sank 
at her eager manner. 

She seemed at once disappointed and re- 
lieved. Could it be possible she dreaded a 
declaration which she had foreseen all along? 
My evil first experience rose up to warn me. 
No, I would not speak now ; it was no time. If 
she loved me, it might make her love me less ; 
better to trust to God to spare us both. 

“ Yes, it is all,” I said doggedly. 

She drew a little nearer, hesitating. It was 
as though her disappointment had gained on 
her relief. 

“ Do you know what I thought you were 
going to say ? ” 

“ No, indeed.” 


29 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Dare I tell you ? ” 

“ You can trust me.” 

Her pale lips parted. Her great eyes shone. 
Another instant, and she had told me that 
which I would have given all but life itself to 
know. But in that tick of time a quick step 
came behind me, and the light went out of the 
sweet face upturned to mine. 

“ I cannot ! I must not ! Here is — that 
man ! ” 

Senhor Santos was all smiles and rings of 
pale-blue smoke. 

“ You will be cut off, friend Cole,” said he. 
“ The fire is spreading.” 

“ Let it spread ! ” I cried, gazing my very 
soul into the young girl’s eyes. “ We have 
not finished our conversation.” 

“ We have ! ” said she, with sudden decision. 
“ Go — go — for my sake — for your own sake — 
go at once ! ” 

She gave me her hand. I merely clasped it. 
And so I left her at the rail — ah, heaven ! how 
often we had argued on that very spot ! So I 
left her, with the greatest effort of all my life 
(but one) ; and yet in passing, full as my heart 
was of love and self, I could not but lay a hand 
on poor Ready’s shoulders. 

30 


The Mysterious Cargo 

“ God bless you, old boy ! ” I said to him. 

He turned a white face that gave me half an 
instant’s pause. 

“ It’s all over with me this time,” he said. 
“ But, I say, I was right about the cargo ? ” 

And I heard a chuckle as I reached the lad- 
der; but Ready was no longer in my mind; 
even Eva was driven out of it, as I stood aghast 
on the topmost rung. 


3i 


CHAPTER III 

TO THE WATER’S EDGE 

It was not the new panic amidships that 
froze my marrow ; it was not that the pinnace 
hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and 
had shot out those who had swarmed aboard 
her before she was lowered, as a cart shoots a 
load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the 
whole boat-load struggling, floundering, sink- 
ing in the sea ; for selfish eyes (and which of us 
is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a 
worse sight yet ; for I saw all this across an im- 
passable gulf of fire. 

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in 
flames to port and starboard of the flaming 
hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck 
sound to the lips of that hideous mouth, with 
the hundred tongues shooting out and up. 

Could I jump it there? I sprang down and 
looked. It was only a few feet across ; but to 
leap through that living fire was to leap into 
eternity. I drew back instantly, less because 
32 


To the Water’s Edge 

my heart failed me, I may truly say, than be- 
cause my common sense did not. 

Some were watching me, it seemed, across 
this hell. “ The bulwarks ! ” they screamed. 
“ Walk along the bulwarks ! ” I held up my 
hand in token that I heard and understood and 
meant to act. And as I did their bidding I 
noticed what indeed had long been apparent to 
idler eyes : the wind was not ; we had lost our 
south-east trades ; the doomed ship was rolling 
in a dead calm. 

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed 
minutes before I dared to move an inch. Then 
I tried it on my hands and knees, but the 
scorched bulwarks burned me to the bone. 
And then I leapt up, desperate with the pain; 
and, with my tortured hands spread wide to 
balance me, I walked those few yards, between 
rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea and 
rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by 
God’s grace without mishap. 

There was no time to think twice about my 
feat, or, indeed, about anything else that befell 
upon a night when each moment was more 
pregnant than the last. And yet I did think 
that those who had encouraged me to attempt 
so perilous a trick might have welcomed me 
33 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


alive among them ; they were looking at some- 
thing else already ; and this was what it was. 

One of the cabin stewards had presented 
himself on the poop; he had a bottle in one 
hand, a glass in the other ; in the red glare we 
saw him dancing in front of the captain like 
an unruly marionette. Harris appeared to 
threaten him. What he said we could not 
hear for the deep-drawn blast and the high 
staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But we 
saw the staggering steward offering him a 
drink ; saw the glass flung next instant in the 
captain’s face, the blood running, a pistol 
drawn, fired without effect, and snatched away 
by the drunken mutineer. Next instant a 
smooth black cane was raining blow after blow 
on the man’s head. He dropped ; the blows 
fell thick and heavy as before. He lay wrig- 
gling; the Portuguese struck and struck until 
he lay quite still ; then we saw Joaquin Santos 
kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the still 
thing’s clothes, as a man might wipe his boots. 

Curses burst from our throats ; yet the fellow 
deserved to die. Nor, as I say, had we time to 
waste two thoughts upon any one incident. 
This last had begun and ended in the same 
minute; in another we were at the starboard 
34 


To the Water’s Edge 


gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the 
lowered long-boat. 

She lay safely on the water : how we thanked 
our gods for that ! Lower and lower sank her 
gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no 
more care than the Gadarene swine whose fate 
we courted. Discipline, order, method, com- 
mon care, we brought none of these things 
with us from our floating furnace; but we 
fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the 
bottom of the long-boat we fought again. 

And yet she held us all ! All, that is, but a 
terror-stricken few, who lay along the jibboom 
like flies upon a stick : all but two or three more 
whom we left fatally hesitating in the fore- 
chains: all but the selfish savages who had 
been the first to perish in the pinnace, and 
one distracted couple who had thrown their 
children into the kindly ocean, and jumped in 
after them out of their torment, locked for ever 
in each other’s arms. 

Yes ! I saw more things on that starry night, 
by that blood-red glare, than I have told you 
in their order, and more things than I shall tell 
you now. Blind would I gladly be for my few 
remaining years, if that night’s horrors could 
be washed from these eyes for ever. I have 
35 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


said so much, however, that in common can- 
dour I must say one thing more. I have 
spoken of selfish savages. God help me and 
forgive me ! For by this time I was one my- 
self. 

In the long-boat we cannot have been less 
than thirty ; the exact number no man will ever 
know. But we shoved off without mischance ; 
the chief mate had the tiller; the third mate 
the boat-hook; and six or eight oars were at 
work, in a fashion, as we plunged among the 
great smooth sickening mounds and valleys of 
fathomless ink. 

Scarcely were we clear when the foremast 
dropped down on the fastenings, dashing the 
jibboom into the water with its load of de- 
mented human beings. The mainmast fol- 
lowed by the board before we had doubled our 
distance from the wreck. Both trailed to port, 
where we could not see them ; and now the 
mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary gran- 
deur, her flapping idle sails lighted up by the 
spreading conflagration, so that they were 
stamped very sharply upon the black and starry 
sky. But the whole scene from the long-boat 
was one of startling brilliancy and horror. 
The fire now filled the entire waist of the ves- 
36 


To the Water’s Edge 


sel, and the noise of it was as the rumble and 
roar of a volcano. As for the light, I declare 
that it put many a star clean out, and dimmed 
the radiance of all the rest, as it flooded the sea 
for miles around, and a sea of molten glass re- 
flected it. My gorge rose at the long low bil- 
lows — sleek as black satin — lifting and dipping 
in this ghastly glare. I preferred to keep my 
eyes upon the little ship burning like a tar bar- 
rel as the picture grew. But presently I 
thanked God aloud : there was the gig swim- 
ming like a beetle over the bloodshot rollers in 
our wake. 

In our unspeakable gladness at being quit 
of the ship, some minutes passed before we dis- 
covered that the long-boat was slowly filling. 
The water was at our ankles before a man of us 
cried out, so fast were our eyes to the poor lost 
Lady Jermyn. Then all at once the ghastly 
fact dawned upon us ; and I think it was the 
mate himself who burst out crying like a child. 
I never ascertained, however, for I had kicked 
off my shoes and was busy baling with them. 
Others were hunting for the leak. But the 
mischief was as subtle as it was mortal — as 
though a plank had started from end to end. 
Within and without the waters rose equally — 
37 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


then lay an instant level with our gunwales— 
then swamped us, oh ! so slowly, that I thought 
we were never going to sink. It was like get- 
ting inch by inch into your tub; I can feel it 
now, creeping, crawling up my back. “ It’s 
coming ! O Christ ! ” muttered one as it 
came; to me it was a downright relief to be 
carried under at last. 

But then, thank God, I have always been a 
strong swimmer. The water was warm and 
buoyant, and I came up like a cork, as I knew 
I should. I shook the drops from my face, 
and there were the sweet stars once more ; for 
many an eye they had gone out for ever ; and 
there the burning wreck. 

A man floundered near me, in a splutter of 
phosphorescence. I tried to help him, and 
in an instant he had me wildly round the 
neck. In the end I shook him off, poor 
devil, to his death. And he was the last I 
tried to aid: have I not said already what I 
was become? 

In a little an oar floated my way: I threw 
my arms across it and gripped it with my chin 
as I swam. It relieved me greatly. Up and 
down I rode among the oily black hillocks ; I 
was down when there was a sudden flare as 
38 


To the Water’s Edge 

though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few 
heads bobbing and a few arms waving frantical- 
ly around me. At the same instant a terrific 
detonation split the ears; and when I rose on 
the next bald billow, where the ship lay burn- 
ing a few seconds before, there remained but a 
red-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for an- 
other minute, and then left a blackness through 
which every star shone with redoubled brill- 
iance. 

And now right and left splashed falling mis- 
siles ; a new source of danger or of temporary 
respite; to me, by a merciful Providence, it 
proved the latter. 

Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash 
right in front of me. A few more yards, and 
my brains had floated with the spume. As it 
was, the oar was dashed from under my arm- 
pits; in another moment they had found a 
more solid resting-place. 

It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars up- 
wards like a boat. In this calm it might float 
for days. I climbed upon the bars — and the 
whole cage rolled over on top of me. 

Coming to the surface, I found to my joy 
that the hen-coop had righted itself ; so now I 
climbed up again, but this time very slowly and 
39 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


gingerly ; the balance was undisturbed, and I 
stretched myself cautiously along the bars on 
my stomach. A good idea immediately oc- 
curred to me. I had jumped as a matter of 
course into the flannels which one naturally 
wears in the tropics. To their lightness I al- 
ready owed my life, but the common cricket- 
belt which was part of the costume was the 
thing to which I owe it most of all. Loosen- 
ing this belt a little, as I tucked my toes tena- 
ciously under the endmost bar, I undid and 
passed the two ends under one of the middle 
bars, fastening the clasp upon the other side. 
If I capsized now, well, we might go to the bot- 
tom together; otherwise the hen-coop and I 
should not part company in a hurry; and I 
thought, I felt, that she would float. 

Worn out as I was, and comparatively se- 
cure for the moment, I will not say that I slept ; 
but my eyes closed, and every fibre rested, as 
I rose and slid with the smooth long swell. 
Whether I did indeed hear voices, curses, cries, 
I cannot say positively to this day. I only 
know that I raised my head and looked sharply 
all ways but the way I durst not look for fear 
of an upset. And, again, I thought I saw first 
a tiny flame, and then a tinier glow ; and as my 
40 


To the Water’s Edge 

head drooped, and my eyes closed again, I say 
I thought I smelt tobacco ; but this, of course, 
was my imagination supplying all the links 
from one. 


I 



\ 




CHAPTER IV 


THE SILENT SEA 

Remember (if indeed there be any need to 
remind you) that it is a flagrant landsman who 
is telling you his tale. Nothing know I of 
seamanship, save what one could not avoid 
picking up on the round voyage of the Lady 
Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. 
I may be told that I have burned that devoted 
vessel as nothing ever burned on land or sea. 
I answer that I write of what I saw, and that 
is not altered by a miscalled spar or a misun- 
derstood manoeuvre. But now I am aboard a 
craft I handled for myself, and must make shift 
to handle a second time with this frail pen. 

The hen-coop was some six feet long, by 
eighteen or twenty inches in height, breadth, 
and depth. It was simply a long box with 
bars in lieu of a lid ; but it was very strongly 
built. 

I recognized it as one of two which had stood 
lashed against either rail of the Lady Jermyn’ s 
poop ; there the bars had risen at right angles 


42 


The Silent Sea 


to the deck; now they lay horizontal, a grid- 
iron six feet long — and my bed. And as each 
particular bar left its own stripe across my 
wearied body, and yet its own comfort in my 
quivering heart, another day broke over the 
face of the waters, and over me. 

Discipline, what there was of it originally, 
had been the very first thing to perish aboard 
our ill-starred ship; the officers, I am afraid, 
were not much better than poor Ready made 
them out (thanks to Bendigo and Ballarat), 
and little had been done in true ship-shape 
style all night. All hands had taken their 
spell at everything as the fancy seized them; 
not a bell had been struck from first to last; 
and I can only conjecture that the fire raged 
four or five hours, from the fact that it was 
midnight by my watch when I left it on my 
cabin drawers, and that the final extinction of 
the smouldering keel was so soon followed by 
the first deep hint of dawn. The rest took 
place with the trite rapidity of the equatorial 
latitudes. It had been my foolish way to pooh- 
pooh the old saying that there is no twilight in 
the tropics. I saw more truth in it as I lay 
lonely on this heaving waste. 

The stars were out ; the sea was silver ; the 
sun was up. 


43 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


And oh ! the awful glory of that sunrise ! It 
was terrific ; it was sickening ; my senses 
swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister, 
without a crest, without a sound ; miles and 
miles of them as I rose ; an oily grave among 
them as I fell. Hill after hill of horror, valley 
after valley of despair ! The face of the waters 
in petty but eternal unrest; and now the sun 
must shine to set it smiling, to show me its 
cruel ceaseless mouthings, to reveal all but the 
ghastlier horrors underneath. 

How deep was it? I fell to wondering! 
Not that it makes any difference whether you 
drown in one fathom or in ten thousand, 
whether you fall from a balloon or from the 
attic window. But the greater depth or dis- 
tance is the worse to contemplate; and I was 
as a man hanging by his hands so high above 
the world, that his dangling feet cover coun- 
tries, continents; a man who must fall very 
soon, and wonders how long he will be falling, 
falling ; and how far his soul will bear his body 
company. 

In time I became more accustomed to the 
sun upon this heaving void ; less frightened, as 
a child is frightened, by the mere picture. And 
I have still the impression that, as hour fol- 
44 


The Silent Sea 


lowed hour since the falling of the wind, the 
nauseous swell in part subsided. I seemed 
less often on an eminence or in a pit ; my glassy 
azure dales had gentler slopes, or a distemper 
was melting from my eyes. 

At least I know that I had now less work to 
keep my frail ship trim, though this also may 
have come by use and practice. In the begin- 
ning one or other of my legs had been for ever 
trailing in the sea, to keep the hen-coop from 
rolling over the other way ; in fact, as I under- 
stand they steer the toboggan in Canada, so I 
my little bark. Now the necessity for this was 
gradually decreasing; whatever the cause, it 
was the greatest mercy the day had brought 
me yet. With less strain on the attention, 
however, there was more upon the mind. No 
longer forced to exert some muscle twice or 
thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, 
and yet time to think. My soul flew homing 
to its proper prison. I was no longer any unit 
at unequal strife with the elements ; instincts 
common to my kind were no longer my only 
stimulus. I was my poor self again ; it was my 
own little life, and no other, that I wanted to 
go on living ; and yet I felt vaguely there was 
some special thing I wished to live for, some- 
45 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

thing that had not been very long in my ken; 
something that had perhaps nerved and 
strengthened me all these hours. What, then, 
could it be? 

I * could not think. For moments or for 
minutes I wondered stupidly, dazed as I was. 
Then I remembered — and the tears gushed to 
my eyes. How could I ever have forgotten? 
I deserved it all, all, all ! To think that many 
a time we must have sat together on this very 
coop ! I kissed its blistering edge at the 
thought, and my tears ran afresh, as though 
they never would stop. 

Ah ! how I thought of her as that cruel day’s 
most cruel sun climbed higher and higher in 
the flawless flaming vault. A pocket-hand- 
kerchief of all things had remained in my trou- 
sers’ pocket through fire and water ; I knotted 
it on the old childish plan, and kept it ever 
drenched upon the head that had its own fever 
to endure as well. Eva Denison ! Eva Deni- 
son! I was talking to her in the past, I was 
talking to her in the future, and oh ! how dif- 
ferent were the words, the tone ! Yes, I hated 
myself for having forgotten her ; but I hated 
God for having given her back to my tortured 
brain ; it made life so many thousandfold more 
46 


The Silent Sea 


sweet, and death so many thousandfold more 
bitter. \ 

She was saved in the gig. Sweet Jesus, 
thanks for that ! But I — I was dying a linger- 
ing death in mid-ocean ; she would never know 
how I loved her, I, who could only lecture her 
when I had her at my side. 

Dying? No — no — not yet! I must live — 
live — live — to tell my darling how I had loved 
her all the time. So I forced myself from my 
lethargy of despair and grief ; and this thought, 
the sweetest thought of all my life, may or may 
not have been my unrealised stimulus ere now ; 
it was in very deed my most conscious and per- 
petual spur henceforth until the end. 

From this onward, while my sense stood by 
me, I was practical, resourceful, alert. It was 
now high-noon, and I had eaten nothing since 
dinner the night before. How clearly I saw 
the long saloon table, only laid, however, abaft 
the mast; the glittering glass, the cool white 
napery, the poor old dried dessert in the green 
dishes! Earlier, this had occupied my mind 
an hour ; now I dismissed it in a moment ; there 
was Eva, I must live for her; there must be 
ways of living at least a day or two without 
sustenance, and I must think of them. 

47 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


So I undid that belt of mine which fastened 
me to my gridiron, and I straddled my craft 
with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which 
I never once had thought until now. Then I 
tightened the belt about my hollow body, and 
just sat there with the problem. The past 
hour I had been wholly unobservant ; the inner 
eye had had its turn ; but that was over now, 
and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greed- 
ily for a sail. Of course I saw none. Had we 
indeed been off our course before the fire broke 
out? Had we burned to cinders aside and 
apart from the regular track of ships? Then, 
though my present valiant mood might ignore 
the adverse chances, they were as one hundred 
to a single chance of deliverance. Our burn- 
ing had brought no ship to our succour ; and 
how should I, a mere speck amid the waves, 
bring one to mine? 

Moreover, I was all but motionless; I was 
barely drifting at all. This I saw from a few 
objects which were floating around me now at 
noon; they had been with me when the high 
sun rose. One was, I think, the very oar 
which had been my first support ; another was 
a sailor’s cap ; but another, which floated near- 
er, was new to me, as though it had come to the 
48 


The Silent Sea 


surface while my eyes were turned inwards. 
And this was clearly the case; for the thing 
was a drowned and bloated corpse. 

. It fascinated me, though not with extraordi- 
nary horror; it came too late to do that. I 
thought I recognized the man’s back. I fan- 
cied it was the mate who had taken charge of 
the long-boat. Was I then the single survivor 
of those thirty souls ? I was still watching my 
poor lost comrade, when that happened to him 
against which even I was not proof. Through 
the deep translucent blue beneath me a slim 
shape glided ; three smaller fish led the way ; 
they dallied an instant a fathom under my feet, 
which were snatched up, with what haste you 
may imagine ; then on they went to surer prey. 

He turned over ; his dreadful face stared up- 
ward; it was the chief officer, sure enough. 
Then he clove the water with a rush, his dead 
hand waved, the last of him to disappear ; and 
I had a new horror to think over for my sins. 
His poor fingers were all broken and beaten to 
a pulp. 

The voices of the ifight came back to me — 
the curses and the cries. Yes, I must have 
heard them. In memory now I recognised 
the voice of the chief mate, but there again 
49 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


came in the assisted imagination. Yet I was 
not so sure of this as before. I thought of 
Santos and his horrible heavy cane. Good 
God! she was in the power of that! I must 
live for Eva indeed ; must save myself to save 
and protect my innocent and helpless girl. 

Again I was a man ; stronger than ever was 
the stimulus now, louder than ever the call on 
every drop of true man’s blood in my perish- 
ing frame. It should not perish ! It should 
not ! 

Yet my throat was parched; my lips were 
caked; my frame was hollow. Very weak I 
was already ; without sustenance I should sure- 
ly die. But as yet I was far enough from 
death, or I had done disdaining the means of 
life that all this time lay ready to my hand. A 
number of dead fowls imparted ballast to my 
little craft. 

Yet I could not look at them in all these 
hours ; or I could look, but that was all. So I 
must sit up one hour more, and keep a sharper 
eye than ever for. the tiniest glimmer of a sail. 
To what end, I often asked myself? I might 
see them ; they would never see me. 

Then my eyes would fall, and “ you squeam- 
ish fool !” I said at intervals, until my tongue 
5 ° 


The Silent Sea 


failed to articulate; it had swollen so in my 
mouth. Flying fish skimmed the water like 
thick spray; petrels were so few that I could 
count them; another shark swam round me 
for an hour. In sudden panic I dashed my 
knuckles on the wooden bars, to get at a duck 
to give the monster for a sop. My knuckles 
bled. I held them to my mouth. My cleav- 
ing tongue wanted more. The duck went to 
the shark ; a few minutes more and I had made 
my own vile meal as well. 


5 1 


CHAPTER V 


MY REWARD 

The sun declined ; my shadow broadened on 
the waters; and now I felt that if my cockle- 
shell could live a little longer, why, so could I. 

I had got at the fowls without further hurt. 
Some of the bars took out, I discovered how. 
And now very carefully I got my legs in, and 
knelt ; but the change of posture was not worth 
the risk one ran for it; there was too much 
danger of capsizing, and failing to free oneself 
before she filled and sank. 

With much caution I began breaking the 
bars, one by one ; it was hard enough, weak as 
I was ; my thighs were of more service than my 
hands. 

But at last I could sit, the grating only cov- 
ering me from the knees downwards. And 
the relief of that outweighed all the danger, 
which, as I discovered to my untold joy, was 
now much less than it had been before. 

I was better ballast than the fowls. 

These I had attached to the lashings which 
5 2 


My Reward 

had been blown asunder by the explosion ; at 
one end of the coop the ring-bolt had been torn 
clean out, but at the other it was the cordage 
that had parted. To the frayed ends I tied my 
fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride 
in my own cunning. Do you not see? It 
would keep them fresh for my use, and it was 
a trick I had read of in no book ; it was all my 
own. 

So evening fell and found me hopeful and 
even puffed up ; but yet, no sail. 

Now, however, I could lie back, and use had 
given me a strange sense of safety; besides, I 
think I knew, I hope I felt, that the hen-coop 
was in other Hands than mine. 

All is reaction in the heart of man ; light fol- 
lows darkness nowhere more surely than in 
that hidden self, and now at sunset it was my 
heart’s high-noon. Deep peace pervaded me 
as I lay outstretched in my narrow rocking 
bed, as it might be in my coffin ; a trust in my 
Maker’s will to save me if that were for the 
best, a trust in His final wisdom and loving- 
kindness, even though this night should be my 
last on earth. For myself I was resigned, and 
for others I must trust Him no less. Who was 
I to constitute myself the protector of the help- 
53 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


less, when He was in His Heaven ? Such was 
my sunset mood ; it lasted a few minutes, and 
then, without radically changing, it became 
more objective. 

The west was a broadening blaze of yellow 
and purple and red. I cannot describe it to 
you. If you have seen the sun set in the 
tropics, you would despise my description; 
and, if not, I for one could never make you see 
it. Suffice it that a petrel wheeled somewhere 
between deepening carmine and paling blue, 
and it took my thoughts off at an earthy tan- 
gent. I thanked God there were no big sea- 
birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no 
albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an 
albatross that I had caught going out. Its 
beak and talons were at the bottom with the 
charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I 
could see them still, could feel them shrewdly 
in my mind’s flesh ; and so to the old supersti- 
tion, strangely justified by my case; and so to 
the poem which I, with my special experience, 
not unnaturally consider the greatest poem 
ever penned. 

But I did not know it then as I do now — • 
and how the lines eluded me ! I seemed to see 
them in the book, yet I could not read the 
words ! 


54 


My Reward 

“ Water, water, everywhere, 

Nor any drop to drink.” 

That, of course, came first (incorrectly) ; and 
it reminded me of my thirst, which the blood 
of the fowls had so very partially appeased. I 
see now that it is lucky I could recall but little 
more. Experience is less terrible than realisa- 
tion, and that poem makes me realise what I 
went through as memory cannot. It has 
verses which would have driven me mad. On 
the other hand, the exhaustive mental search 
for them distracted my thoughts until the stars 
were back in the sky; and now I had a new 
occupation, saying to myself all the poetry I 
could remember, especially that of the sea ; for 
I was a bookish fellow even then. But I never 
was anything of a scholar. It is odd, there- 
fore, that the one apposite passage which re- 
curred to me in its entirety was in hexameters 
and pentameters: — 

Me miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum ! 

Jam jam tacturos sidera summa putes. 

Quantae diducto subsidunt aequore valles ! 

Jam jam tacturas Tartara nigra putes. 
Quocunque adspicio, nihil est nisi pontus et aether; 

Fluctibus hie tumidis, nubibus ille minax. . . • 

55 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


More there was of it in my head; but this 
much was an accurate statement of my case; 
and yet less so now (I was thankful to reflect) 
than in the morning, when every wave was in- 
deed a mountain, and its trough a Tartarus. 
I had learnt the lines at school ; nay, they had 
formed my very earliest piece of Latin repeti- 
tion. And how sharply I saw the room I said 
them in, the man I said them to, ever since my 
friend ! I figured him even now hearing Ovid 
rep., the same passage in the same room. And 
I lay saying it on a hen-coop in the middle of 
the Atlantic Ocean ! 

At last I fell into a deep sleep, a long uncon- 
scious holiday of the soul, undefiled by any 
dream. 

They say that our dreaming is done as we 
slowly wake; then was I out of the way of it 
that night, for a sudden violent rocking awoke 
me in one horrid instant. I made it worse by 
the way I started to a sitting posture. I had 
shipped some water. I was shipping more. 
Yet all around the sea was glassy ; whence then 
the commotion ? As my ship came trim again, 
and I saw that my hour was not yet, the cause 
occurred to me; and my heart turned so sick 
that it was minutes before I had the courage 
to test my theory. 


My Reward 

It was the true one. 

A shark had been at my trailing fowls ; had 
taken the bunch of them together, dragging 
the legs from my loose fastenings. Lucky 
they had been no stronger! Else had I been 
dragged down to perdition too. 

Lucky, did I say? The refinement of cru- 
elty rather; for now I had neither meat nor 
drink ; my throat was a kiln : my tongue a 
flame : and another day at hand. 

The stars were out ; the sea was silver ; the 
sun was up ! 


Hours passed. 

I was waiting now for my delirium. 

It came in bits. 

I was a child. I was playing on the lawn at 
home. I was back on the blazing sea. 

I was a schoolboy saying my Ovid; then 
back once more. 

The hen-coop was the Lady Jermyn. I was 
at Eva Denison’s side. They were marrying 
us on board. The ship’s bell was ringing for 
us ; a guitar in the background burlesqued the 
Wedding March under skinny fingers ; the air 
was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they 
raised a pall of smoke above the mastheads, 
57 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


they set fire to the ship ; smoke and flame cov- 
ered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame 
filled the universe ; the sea dried up, and I was 
left lying in its bed, lying in my coffin, with 
red-hot teeth, because the sun blazed right 
above them, and my withered lips were drawn 
back from them for ever. 

So once more I came back to my living 
death: too weak now to carry a finger to the 
salt-water and back to my mouth : too weak to 
think of Eva : too weak to pray any longer for 
the end, to trouble or to care any more. 

Only so tired. . . . 


Death has no more terrors for me. I have 
supped the last horror of the worst death a man 
can die. You shall hear now for what I was 
delivered ; you shall read of my reward. 

My floating coffin was many things in turn ; 
a railway carriage, a pleasure boat on the 
Thames, a hammock under the trees; last of 
all it was the upper berth in a not very sweet- 
smelling cabin, with a clatter of knives and 
forks near at hand, and a very strong odour of 
onions in the Irish-stew. 

My hand crawled to my head; both felt a 
wondrous weight; and my head was covered 
58 


My Reward 

with bristles no longer than those on my chin, 
only less stubborn. 

“Where am I?” I feebly asked. 

The knives and forks clattered on, and pres- 
ently I burst out crying because they had not 
heard me, and I knew that I could never make 
them hear. Well, they heard my sobs, and a 
huge fellow came with his mouth full, and 
smelling like a pickle-bottle. 

“Where ami?” 

“ Aboard the brig Eliza, Liverpool, home- 
ward bound ; glad to see them eyes open.” 

“ Have I been here long ? ” 

“ Matter o’ ten days.” 

“ Where did you find me ?” 

“ Floating in a hen-coop : thought you was 
a dead ’un.” 

“ Do you know what ship ? ” 

“ Do we know ? No, that’s what you’ve got 
to tell us ! ” 

“ I can’t,” I sighed, too weak to wag my 
head upon the pillow. 

The man went to my cabin door. 

“ Here’s a go,” said he ; “ forgotten the 
name of his blessed ship, he has. Where’s 
that there paper, Mr. Bowles? There’s just a 
chance it may be the same.” 

59 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ I’ve got it, sir.” 

“ Well, fetch it along, and come you in, Mr. 
Bowles ; likely you may think o’ somethin’.” 

A reddish, hook-nosed man, with a jaunty 
wicked look, came and smiled upon me in the 
friendliest fashion : the smell of onions became 
more than I knew how to endure. 

“ Ever heard of the ship Lady Jermynf ” 
asked the first comer, winking at the other. 

I thought very hard, the name did sound 
familiar ; but no, I could not honestly say that 
I had heard it before. 

The captain looked at his mate. 

“ It was a thousand to one,” said he ; “ still, 
we may as well try him with the other names. 
Ever heard of Cap’n Harris, mister ? ” 

“ Not that I know of.” 

“Of Saunderson — stooard ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Or Crookes — quartermaster ? ” 

“ Never.” 

“ Nor yet of Ready — a passenger? ” 

“ No.” 

“ It’s no use goin’ on,” said the captain, 
folding up the paper. 

“ None whatever, sir,” said the mate. 

“Ready ! Ready !” I repeated. “ I do 
60 


My Reward 

seem to have heard that name before. Won’t 
you give me another chance ? ” 

The paper was unfolded with a shrug. 

“There was another passenger of the name 
of San — Santos. Dutchman, seemin’ly. Ever 
heard o’ him?” 

My disappointment was keen. I could not 
say that I had. Yet I would not swear that I 
had not. 

“ Oh, won’t you ? Well, there’s only one 
more chance. Ever heard of Miss Eva Deni- 


“ By God, yes ! Have you? ” 

I was sitting bolt upright in my bunk. The 
skipper’s beard dropped upon his chest. 

“ Bless my soul ! The last name o’ the lot, 
too ! ” 

“ Have you heard of her ? ” I reiterated. 

“ Wait a bit, my lad ! Not so fast. Lie 
down again and tell me who she was.” 

“ Who she was ?” I screamed. “ I want to 
know where she is ! ” 

“I can’t hardly say,” said the captain awk- 
wardly. “We found the gig o’ the Lady Jer- 
myn the week arter we found you, bein’ be- 
calmed like; there wasn’t no lady aboard her, 
though.” 


6 1 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Was there anybody ? ” 

“ Two dead ’uns — an’ this here paper.” 

“ Let me see it ! ” 

The skipper hesitated. 

“ Hadn’t you better wait a bit ? ” 

“No, no; for Christ’s sake let me see the 
worst ; do you think I can’t read it in your 
face?” 

I could — I did. I made that plain to them, 
and at last I had the paper smoothed out upon 
my knees. It was a short statement of the 
last sufferings of those who had escaped in 
the gig, and there was nothing in it that I did 
not now expect. They had buried Ready 
first — then my darling — then her step-father. 
The rest expected to follow fast enough. It 
was all written plainly, on a sheet of the log- 
book, in different trembling hands. Cap- 
tain Harris had gone next ; and two had been 
discovered dead. 

How long I studied that bit of crumpled 
paper, with the salt spray still sparkling on it 
faintly, God alone knows. All at once a peal 
of nightmare laughter rattled through the 
cabin. My deliverers started back. The 
laugh was mine. 


6 2 


CHAPTER VI 


THE SOLE SURVIVOR 

A few weeks later I landed in England, I, 
who no longer desired to set foot on any land 
again. 

At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and grey; 
my nerves were shattered, my heart was 
broken ; and my face showed it without let or 
hindrance from the spirit that was broken too. 
Pride, will, courage and endurance, all these 
had expired in my long and lonely battle with 
the sea. They had kept me alive — for this. 
And now they left me naked to mine enemies. 

For every hand seemed raised against me, 
though in reality it was the hand of fellow- 
ship that the world stretched out, and the 
other was the reading of a jaundiced eye. I 
could not help it: there was a poison in my 
veins that made me all ingratitude and per- 
versity. The world welcomed me back, and 
I returned the compliment by sulking like the 
recaptured runaway I was at heart. The 
world showed a sudden interest in me; so I 

63 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


took no further interest in the world, but, on 
the contrary, resented its attentions with un- 
reasonable warmth and obduracy ; and my 
would-be friends I regarded as my very worst 
enemies. The majority, I feel sure, meant but 
well and kindly by the poor survivor. But 
the survivor could not forget that his name 
was still in the newspapers, nor blink the fact 
that he was an unworthy hero of the passing 
hour. And he suffered enough from brazenly 
meddlesome and self-seeking folk, from im- 
pudent and inquisitive intruders, to justify 
some suspicion of old acquaintances suddenly 
styling themselves old friends, and of distant 
connections newly and unduly eager to claim 
relationship. Many I misjudged, and have 
long known it. On the whole, however, I 
wonder at that attitude of mine as little as I 
approve of it. 

If I had distinguished myself in any other 
way, it would have been a different thing. It 
was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderate in- 
terest in one thrown into purely accidental and 
necessarily painful prominence — the vulgari- 
sation of an unspeakable tragedy — that my 
soul abhorred. I confess that I regarded it 
from my own unique and selfish point of view. 
64 


The Sole Survivor 


What was a thrilling matter to the world was 
a torturing memory to me. The quintessence 
of the torture was, moreover, my own secret. 
It was not the loss of the Lady Jermyn that I 
could not bear to speak about ; it was my own 
loss ; but the one involved the other. My loss 
apart, however, it was plain enough to dwell 
upon experiences so terrible and yet so recent 
as those which I had lived to tell. I did what 
I considered my duty to the public, but I cer- 
tainly did no more. My reticence was re- 
buked in the papers that made the most of me, 
but would fain have made more. And yet I 
do not think that I was anything but docile 
with those who had a manifest right to ques- 
tion me ; to the owners, and to other interested 
persons, with whom I was confronted on one 
pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and 
as freely as I have told it here, though each 
telling hurt more than the last. That was 
necessary and unavoidable; it was the private 
intrusions which I resented with all the spleen 
the sea had left me in exchange for the quali- 
ties it had taken away. 

Relatives I had as few as misanthropist 
could desire; but from self-congratulation on 
the fact, on first landing, I soon came to keen 
65 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


regret. They at least would have sheltered 
me from spies and busy-bodies; they at least 
would have secured the peace and privacy of 
one who was no hero in fact or spirit, whose 
noblest deed was a piece of self-preservation 
which he wished undone with all his heart. 

Self-consciousness no doubt multiplied my 
flattering assailants. I have said that my 
nerves were shattered. I may have imagined 
much and exaggerated the rest. Yet what 
truth there was in my suspicions you shall 
duly see. I felt sure that I was followed, in the 
street, and my every movement dogged by 
those to whom I would not condescend to turn 
and look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage 
to go near my club, and the Temple was a 
place where I was accosted in every court, 
effusively congratulated on the marvellous 
preservation of my stale spoilt life, and in- 
vited right and left to spin my yarn over a 
quiet pipe ! Well, perhaps such invitations 
were not so common as they have grown in 
my memory ; nor must you confuse my then 
feelings on all these matters with those which 
I entertain as I write. I have grown older, 
and, I hope, something kindlier and wiser 
since then. Yet to this day I cannot blame 
66 


The Sole Survivor 


myself for abandoning my chambers and 
avoiding my club. 

For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a 
small, quiet, empty, private hotel which I 
knew of in Charterhouse Square. Instantly 
the room next mine became occupied. 

All the first night I imagined I heard voices 
talking about me in that room next door. It 
was becoming a disease with me. Either I 
was being dogged, watched, followed, day and 
night, indoors and out, or I was the victim of 
a very ominous hallucination. That night I 
never closed an eye nor lowered my light. In 
the morning I took a four-wheel cab and 
drove straight to Harley Street ; and, upon my 
soul, as I stood on the specialist’s door-step, 
I could have sworn I saw the occupant of the 
room next mine dash by me in a hansom ! 

“Ah ! ” said the specialist ; “ so you cannot 
sleep; you hear voices; you fancy you are 
being followed in the street. You don’t think 
these fancies spring entirely from the imag- 
ination? Not entirely — just so. And you 
keep looking behind you, as though somebody 
were at your elbow ; and you prefer to sit with 
your back close to the wall. Just so-— 
just so. Distressing symptoms, to be sure, 

67 


Dead Men Tel! No Tales 


but — but hardly to be wondered at in a man 
who has come through your nervous strain.” 
A keen professional light glittered in his eyes. 
‘‘And almost commonplace,” he added, smil- 
ing, “ compared with the hallucinations you 
must have suffered from on that hen-coop! 
Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of 
your case is very great ! ” 

“ It may be,” said I, brusquely. “ But I 
come to you to get that hen-coop out of my 
head, not to be reminded of it. Everybody 
asks me about the damned thing, and you 
follow everybody else. I wish it and I were 
at the bottom of the sea together ! ” 

This speech had the effect of really interest- 
ing the doctor in my present condition, which 
was indeed one of chronic irritation and ex- 
treme excitability, alternating with fits of the 
very blackest despair. Instead of offending my 
gentleman I had put him on his mettle, and 
for half-an-hour he honoured me with the most 
exhaustive inquisition ever elicited from a 
medical man. His panacea was somewhat 
in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it 
had the merits of simplicity and of common 
sense. A change of air — perfect quiet — say a 
cottage in the country — not too near the sea. 
And he shook my hand kindly when I left. 

68 


The Sole Survivor 


“ Keep up your heart, my dear sir,” said he. 
“ Keep up your courage and your heart.” 

“ My heart ! ” I cried. “ It’s at the bottom 
of the Atlantic Ocean.” 

He was the first to whom I had said as 
much. He was a stranger. What did it 
matter? And, oh, it was so true — so true. 

Every day and all day I was thinking of my 
love ; every hour and all hours she was before 
me with her sunny hair and young, young 
face. Her wistful eyes were gazing into mine 
continually. Their wistfulness I had never 
realised at the time ; but now I did ; and I saw 
it for what it seemed always to have been, the 
soft, sad, yearning look of one fated to die 
young. So young — so young! And I might 
live to be an old man, mourning her. 

That I should never love again I knew full 
well. This time there was no mistake. I have 
implied, I believe, that it was for another wom- 
an I fled originally to the diggings. Well, 
that one was still unmarried, and when the 
papers were full of me she wrote me a letter 
which I now believe to have been merely kind. 
At the time I was all uncharitableness; but 
words of mine would fail to tell you how cold 
this letter left me; it was as a candle lighted 
in the full blaze of the sun. 

69 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


With all my bitterness, however, you must 
not suppose that I had quite lost the feelings 
which had inspired me at sunset on the lonely 
ocean, while my mind still held good. I had 
been too near my Maker ever to lose those 
feelings altogether. They were with me in the 
better moments of these my worst days. I 
trusted His wisdom still. There was a reason 
for everything ; there were reasons for all this. 
I alone had been saved out of all those souls 
who sailed from Melbourne in the Lady Jer- 
myn. Why should I have been the favoured 
one; I with my broken heart and now lonely 
life? Some great inscrutable reason there 
must be; at my worst I did not deny that. 
But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with the 
reason. I just waited for it to be revealed to 
me, if it were God’s will ever to reveal it. And 
that I conceive to be the one spirit in which 
a man may contemplate, with equal sanity and 
reverence, the mysteries and the miseries of 
his life. 


70 


CHAPTER VII 


I FIND A FRIEND 

> 

The night after I consulted the specialist 
I was quite determined to sleep. I had laid in 
a bundle of the daily papers. No country cot- 
tage was advertised to let but I knew of it by 
evening, and about all the likely ones I had 
already written. The scheme occupied my 
thoughts. Trout-fishing was a desideratum. 
I would take my rod and plenty of books, 
would live simply and frugally, and it should 
make a new man of me by Christmas. It was 
now October. I went to sleep thinking of 
autumn tints against an autumn sunset. It 
must have been very early, certainly not later 
than ten o’clock; the previous night I had 
not slept at all. 

Now, this private hotel of mine was a very 
old-fashioned house, dark and dingy all day 
long, with heavy old chandeliers and black old 
oak, and dead flowers in broken flower-pots 
surrounding a grimy grass-plot in the rear. 
On this latter my bedroom window looked; 

7 1 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


and never am I likely to forget the vile music 
of the cats throughout my first long wakeful 
night there. The second night they actually 
woke me; doubtless they had been busy long 
enough, but it was all of a sudden that I heard 
them, and lay listening for more, wide awake 
in an instant. My window had been very 
softly opened, and the draught fanned my 
forehead as I held my breath. 

A faint light glimmered through a ground- 
glass pane over the door; and was dimly re- 
flected by the toilet mirror, in its usual place 
against the window. This mirror I saw 
moved, and next moment I had bounded from 
bed. 

The mirror fell with a horrid clatter: the 
toilet-table followed it with a worse: the thief 
was gone as he had come ere my toes halted 
aching amid the debris. 

A useless little balcony — stone slab and iron 
railing — jutted out from my window. I 
thought I saw a hand on the railing, another 
on the slab, then both together on the lower 
level for one instant before they disappeared. 
There was a dull yet springy thud on the grass 
below. Then no more noise but the distant 
thunder of the traffic, and the one that woke 
7 2 


I Find a Friend 

me, until the window next mine was thrown 
up. 

“ What the devil’s up ? ” 

The voice was rich, cheery, light-hearted, 
agreeable ; all that my own was not as I an- 
swered “Nothing!” for this was not the first 
time my next-door neighbour had tried to 
scrape acquaintance with me. 

“ But surely, sir, I heard the very dickens of 
a row ? ” 

“ You may have done.” 

“ I was afraid some one had broken into 
your room ! ” 

“ As a matter of fact,” said I, put to shame 
by the undiminished good-humour of my 
neighbour, “ some one did ; but he’s gone now, 
so let him be.” 

“Gone? Not he! He’s getting over that 
wall. After him — after him ! ” And the head 
disappeared from the window next mine. 

I rushed into the corridor, and was just in 
time to intercept a singularly handsome 
young fellow, at whom I had hardly taken the 
trouble to look until now. He was in full 
evening dress, and his face was radiant with 
the spirit of mischief and adventure. 

“ For God’s sake, sir,” I whispered, “ let this 
73 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


matter rest. I shall have to come forward if 
you persist, and heaven knows I have been be- 
fore the public quite enough ! ” 

His dark eyes questioned me an instant, 
then fell as though he would not disguise 
that he recollected and understood. I liked 
him for his good taste. I liked him for his 
tacit sympathy, and better still for the amus- 
ing disappointment in his gallant, young 
face. 

“ I am sorry to have robbed you of a pleas- 
ant chase,” said I. “ At one time I should 
have been the first to join you. But, to tell 
you the truth, I’ve had enough excitement 
lately to last me for my life.” 

“ I can believe that,” he answered with his 
fine eyes full upon me. How strangely I had 
misjudged him! I saw no vulgar curiosity in 
his flattering gaze, but rather that very sym- 
pathy of which I stood in need. I offered him 
my hand. 

“ It is very good of you to give in,” I said. 
“ No one else has heard a thing, you see. I 
shall look for another opportunity of thanking 
you to-morrow.” 

“ No, no ! ” cried he, “ thanks be hanged, but 
— but, I say, if I promise you not to bore you 
74 


I Find a Friend 


about things — won’t you drink a glass of 
brandy-and-water in my room before you turn 
in again ? ” 

Brandy-and-water being the very thing I 
needed, and this young man pleasing me 
more and more, I said that I would join him 
with all my heart, and returned to my room 
for my dressing-gown and slippers. To find 
them, however, I had to light my candles, 
when the first thing I saw was the havoc my 
marauder had left behind him. The mirror 
was cracked across; the dressing-table had 
lost a leg; and both lay flat, with my brushes 
and shaving-table, and the foolish toilet crock- 
ery which no one uses (but I should have to 
replace), strewn upon the carpet. But one 
thing I found that had not been there before: 
under the window lay a formidable sheath- 
knife without its sheath. I picked it up with 
something of a thrill, which did not lessen 
when I felt its edge. The thing was diaboli- 
cally sharp. I took it with me to show my 
neighbour, whom I found giving his order to 
the boots; it seemed that it was barely mid- 
night, and that he had only just come in when 
the clatter took place in my room. 

“ Hillo ! ” he cried, when the man was gone, 
75 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


and I produced my trophy. “ Why, what the 
mischief have you got there ? ” 

“ My caller’s card,” said I. “ He left it be- 
hind him. Feel the edge.” 

I have seldom seen a more indignant face 
than the one which my new acquaintance bent 
over the weapon, as he held it to the light, and 
ran his finger along the blade. He could not 
have frowned more heavily if he had recog- 
nized the knife. 

“ The villains ! ” he muttered. “ The 
damned villains ! ” 

“Villains? ” I queried. “ Did you see more 
than one of them, then ? ” 

“Didn’t you?” he asked quickly. “Yes, 
yes, to be sure ! There was at least one other 
beggar skulking down below.” He stood 
looking at me, the knife in his hand, though 
mine was held out for it. “ Don’t you think, 
Mr. Cole, that it’s our duty to hand this over 
to the police? I — I’ve heard of other cases 
about these Inns of Court. There’s evidently 
»a gang of them, and this knife might convict 
the lot ; there’s no saying ; anyway I think the 
police should have it. If you like I’ll take it 
to Scotland Yard myself, and hand it over 
without mentioning your name.” 

76 


I Find a Friend 


“ Oh, if you keep my name out of it,” said I, 
“ and say nothing about it here in the hotel, 
you may do what you like, and welcome ! It’s 
the proper course, no doubt; only I’ve had 
publicity enough, and would sooner have felt 
that blade in my body than set my name going 
again in the newspapers.” 

“I understand,” he said, with his well-bred 
sympathy, which never went a shade too far; 
and he dropped the weapon into a drawer, 
as the boots entered with the tray. In a min- 
ute he had brewed two steaming jorums of 
spirit-and-water ; as he handed me one, I 
feared he was going to drink my health, or 
toast my luck ; but no, he was the one man I 
had met who seemed, as he said, to “ under- 
stand.” Nevertheless, he had his toast. 

“ Here’s confusion to the criminal classes in 
general,” he cried ; “ but death and damnation 
to the owners of that knife ! ” 

And we clinked tumblers across the little 
oval table in the middle of the room. It was 
more of a sitting-room than mine; a bright 
fire was burning in the grate, and my com- 
panion insisted on my sitting over it in the 
arm-chair, while for himself he fetched the one 
from his bedside, and drew up the table so 
77 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


that our glasses should be handy. He then 
produced a handsome cigar-case admirably 
stocked, and we smoked and sipped in the 
cosiest fashion, though without exchanging 
many words. 

You may imagine my pleasure in the society 
of a youth, equally charming in looks, man- 
ners and address, who had not one word to say 
to me about the Lady Jermyn or my hen-coop. 
It was unique. Yet such, I suppose, was my 
native contrariety, that I felt I could have 
spoken of the catastrophe to this very boy with 
less reluctance than to any other creature 
whom I had encountered since my deliver- 
ance. He seemed so full of silent sympathy: 
his consideration for my feelings was so 
marked and yet so unobtrusive. I have called 
him a boy. I am apt to write as the old man 
I have grown, though I do believe I felt 
older then than now. In any case my young 
friend was some years my junior. I after- 
wards found out that he was six-and-twenty. 

I have also called him handsome. He was 
the handsomest man that I have ever met, had 
the frankest face, the finest eyes, the brightest 
smile. Yet his bronzed forehead was low, and 
his mouth rather impudent and bold than truly 
78 


I Find a Friend 


strong. And there was a touch of foppery 
about him, in the enormous white tie and the 
much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which 
was only redeemed by that other touch of dev- 
ilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By 
the rich brown of his complexion, as well as 
by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I 
should have said that he was a naval officer 
ashore, had he not told me who he was of his 
own accord. 

“ By the way,” he said, “ I ought to give 
you my name. It’s Rattray, of one of the 
many Kirby Halls in this country. My one’s 
down in Lancashire.” 

“ I suppose there’s no need to tell my 
name ? ” said I, less sadly, I daresay, than I 
had ever yet alluded to the tragedy which I 
alone survived. It was an unnecessary al- 
lusion, too, as a reference to the foregoing 
conversation will show. 

“ Well, no,” said he, in his frank fashion ; “ I 
can’t honestly say there is.” 

We took a few puffs, he watching the fire, 
and I his firelit face. 

“ It must seem strange to you to be sitting 
with the only man who lived to tell the tale ! ” 

The egotism of this speech was not wholly 
79 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


gratuitous. I thought it did seem strange to 
him: that a needless constraint was put upon 
him by excessive consideration for my feel- 
ings. I desired to set him at his ease as he 
had set me at mine. On the contrary, he 
seemed quite startled by my remark. 

“ It is strange,” he said, with a shudder, fol- 
lowed by the biggest sip of brandy-and-water 
he had taken yet. “ It must have been hor- 
rible — horrible !” he added to himself, his dark 
eyes staring into the fire. 

“ Ah ! ” said I, “ it was even more horrible 
than you suppose or can even imagine.” 

I was not thinking of myself, nor of my 
love, nor of any particular incident of the fire 
that still went on burning in my brain. My 
tone was doubtless confidential, but I was 
meditating no special confidence when my 
companion drew one with his next words. 
These, however, came after a pause, in which 
my eyes had fallen from his face, but in which 
I heard him emptying his glass. 

“ What do you mean ?” he whispered. 
“ That there were other circumstances — things 
which haven’t got into the papers ? ” 

“ God knows there were,” I answered, my 
face in my hands ; and, my grief brought home 
80 


I Find a Friend 

to me, there I sat with it in the presence of 
that stranger, without compunction and with- 
out shame. 

He sprang up and paced the room. His 
tact made me realise my weakness, and I was 
struggling to overcome it when he surprised 
me by suddenly stopping and laying a rather 
tremulous hand upon my shoulder. 

“ You — it wouldn’t do you any good to 
speak of those circumstances, I suppose ? ” he 
faltered. 

“ No : not now : no good at all.” 

“ Forgive me,” he said, resuming his walk. 
“ I had no business — I felt so sorry — I cannot 
tell you how I sympathise ! And yet — I won- 
der if you will always feel so ? ” 

“ No saying how I shall feel when I am a 
man again,” said I. “You see what I am at 
present.” And, pulling myself together, I 
rose to find my new friend quite agitated in his 
turn. 

“ I wish we had some more brandy,” he 
sighed. “I’m afraid it’s too late to get any 
now.” 

“ And I’m glad of it,” said I. “ A man in 
my state ought not to look at spirits, or he 
may never look past them again. Thank 
Si 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


goodness, there are other medicines. Only 
this morning I consulted the best man on 
nerves in London. I wish I’d gone to him 
long ago.” 

“ Harley Street, was it ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Saw you on his doorstep, by Jove ! ” cried 
Rattray at once. “ I was driving over to 
Hampstead, and I thought it was you. Well, 
what’s the prescription ? ” 

In my satisfaction at finding that he had not 
been dogging me intentionally (though I had 
forgotten the incident till he reminded me of 
it), I answered his question with unusual ful- 
ness. 

“ I should go abroad,” said Rattray. “ But 
then, I always am abroad ; it’s only the other 
day I got back from South America, and I 
shall up anchor again before this filthy Eng- 
lish winter sets in.” 

Was he a sailor after all, or only a well-to- 
do wanderer on the face of the earth? He 
now mentioned that he was only in England 
for a few weeks, to have a look at his estate, 
and so forth ; after which he plunged into more 
or less enthusiastic advocacy of this or that 
foreign resort, as opposed to the English 
82 


I Find a Friend 


cottage upon which I told him I had set my 
heart. 

He was now, however, less spontaneous, I 
thought, than earlier in the night. His voice 
had lost its hearty ring, and he seemed preoc- 
cupied, as if talking of one matter while he 
thought upon another. Yet he would not let 
me go; and presently he confirmed my sus- 
picion, no less than my first impression of his 
delightful frankness and cordiality, by candid- 
ly telling me what was on his mind. 

“If you really want a cottage in the coun- 
try, ’’ said he, “ and the most absolute peace and 
quiet to be got in this world, I know of the 
very thing on my land in Lancashire. It 
would drive me mad in a week; but if you 
really care for that sort of thing ” 

“ An occupied cottage ?” I interrupted. 

“ Yes ; a couple rent it from me, very decent 
people of the name of Braithwaite. The man 
is out all day, and won’t bother you when he’s 
in ; he’s not like other people, poor chap. But 
the woman’s all there, and would do her best 
for you in a humble, simple, wholesome sort 
of way.” 

“ You think they would take me in?” 

“ They have taken other men — artists as a 
rule.” 


83 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Then it’s a picturesque country ? ” 

“ Oh, it’s that if it’s nothing else ; but not a 
town for miles, mind you, and hardly a village 
worthy the name.” 

“ Any fishing? ” 

“ Yes — trout — small but plenty of ’em — in a 
beck running close behind the cottage.” 

“ Come,” cried I, “ this sounds delightful ! 
Shall you be up there? ” 

“ Only for a day or two,” was the reply. “ 1 
shan’t trouble you, Mr. Cole.” 

“ My dear sir, that wasn’t my meaning at all. 
I’m only sorry I shall not see something of 
you on your own heath. I can’t thank you 
enough for your kind suggestion. When do 
you suppose the Braithwaites could do with 
me?” 

His charming smile rebuked my impa- 
tience. 

“ We must first see whether they can do 
with you at all,” said he. “ I sincerely hope 
they can ; but this is their time of year for 
tourists, though perhaps a little late. I’ll tell 
you what I’ll do. As a matter of fact, I’m 
going down there to-morrow, and I’ve got to 
telegraph to my place in any case to tell them 
when to meet me. I’ll send the telegram first 
84 


I Find a Friend 


thing, and I’ll make them send one back to 
say whether there’s room in the cottage or 
not.” 

I thanked him warmly, but asked if the 
cottage was close to Kirby Hall, and whether 
this would not be giving a deal of trouble rt 
the other end ; whereupon he mischievously 
misunderstood me a second time, saying the 
cottage and the hall were not even in sight of 
each other, and I really had no intrusion to 
fear, as he was a lonely bachelor like myself, 
and would only be up there four or five days at 
the most. So I made my appreciation of his 
society plainer than ever to him ; for indeed I 
had found a more refreshing pleasure in it al- 
ready than I had hoped to derive from mortal 
man again ; and we parted, at three o’clock in 
the morning, like old fast friends. 

“ Only don’t expect too much, my dear Mr. 
Cole,” were his last words to me. “ My own 
place is as ancient and as tumble-down as 
most ruins that you pay to see over. And I’m 
never there myself because — I tell you frankly 
— I hate it like poison ! ” 


**. 


85 


CHAPTER VIII 


A SMALL PRECAUTION 

My delight in the society of this young 
Squire Rattray (as I soon was to hear him 
styled) had been such as to make me almost 
forget the sinister incident which had brought 
us together. When I returned to my room, 
however, there were the open window and the 
litter on the floor to remind me of what had 
happened earlier in the night. Yet I was less 
disconcerted than you might suppose. A 
common housebreaker can have few terrors 
for one who has braved those of mid-ocean 
single-handed; my would-be visitor had no 
longer any for me ; for it had not yet occurred 
to me to connect him with the voices and the 
footsteps to which, indeed, I had been unable 
to swear before the doctor. On the other 
hand, these morbid imaginings (as I was far 
from unwilling to consider them) had one and 
all deserted me in the sane, clean company of 
the capital young fellow in the next room. 

I have confessed my condition up to the 
86 


A Small Precaution 


time of this queer meeting. I have tried to 
bring young Rattray before you with some 
hint of his freshness and his boyish charm; 
and though the sense of failure is heavy upon 
me there, I who knew the man knew also that 
I must fail to do him justice. Enough may have 
been said, however, to impart some faint idea 
of what this youth was to me in the bitter and 
embittering anti-climax of my life. Conven- 
tional figures spring to my pen, but every one 
of them is true; he was flowers in spring, he 
was sunshine after rain, he was rain following 
long months of drought. I slept admirably 
after all ; and I awoke to see the overturned 
toilet-table, and to thrill as I remembered 
there was one fellow-creature with whom I 
could fraternise without the fear of a rude re- 
opening of my every wound. 

I hurried my dressing in the hope of our 
breakfasting together. I knocked at the next 
door, and, receiving no answer, even ventured 
to enter, with the same idea. He was not 
there. He was not in the coffee-room. He 
was not in the hotel. 

I broke my fast in disappointed solitude, 
and I hung about disconsolate all the morn- 
ing, looking wistfully for my new-made 

&7 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


friend. Towards mid-day he drove up in a 
cab which he kept waiting at the curb. 

“It’s all right!” he cried out in his hearty 
way. "I sent my telegram first thing, and 
IVe had the answer at my club. The rooms 
are vacant, and I’ll see that Jane Braith- 
waite has all ready for you by to-morrow 
night.” 

I thanked him from my heart. “You seem 
in a hurry !” I added, as I followed him up the 
stairs. 

“I am,” said he. “It’s a near thing for the 
train. I’ve just time to stick in my things.” 

“Then I’ll stick in mine,” said I impulsively, 
“and I’ll come with you, and doss down in any 
corner for the night.” 

He stopped and turned on the stairs. 

“You mustn’t do that,” said he; “they won’t 
have anything ready. I’m going to make it 
my privilege to see that everything is as cosy 
as possible when you arrive. I simply can’t 
allow you to come to-day, Mr. Cole!” He 
smiled, but I saw that he was in earnest, and 
of course I gave in. 

“All right,” said I ; “then I must content 
myself with seeing you off at the station.” 

To my surprise his smile faded, and a flush 
88 


A Small Precaution 


of undisguised annoyance made him, if any- 
thing, better-looking than ever. It brought 
out a certain strength of mouth and jaw which 
I had not observed there hitherto. It gave 
him an ugliness of expression which only em- 
phasized his perfection of feature. 

“You mustn’t do that either,” said he, short- 
ly. “I have an appointment at the station. I 
shall be talking business all the time.” 

He was gone to his room, and I went to 
mine feeling duly snubbed ; yet I deserved it ; 
for I had exhibited a characteristic (though 
not chronic) want of taste, of which I am 
sometimes guilty to this day. Not to show 
ill-feeling on the head of it, I nevertheless fol- 
lowed him down again in four or five minutes. 
And I was rewarded by his brightest smile 
as he grasped my hand. 

“Come to-morrow by the same train,” said 
he, naming station, line, and hour; “unless I 
telegraph, all will be ready and you shall be 
met. You may rely on reasonable charges. 
As to the fishing, go up-stream — to the right 
when you strike the beck — and you’ll find a 
good pool or two. I may have to go to Lan- 
caster the day after to-morrow, but I shall 
give you a call when I get back.” 

89 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


With that we parted, as good friends as ever. 
I observed that my regret at losing him was 
shared by the boots, who stood beside me on 
the steps as his hansom rattled off. 

“I suppose Mr. Rattray stays here always 
when he comes to town?” said I. 

“No, sir,” said the man, “we’ve never had 
him before, not in my time ; but I shouldn’t 
mind if he came again.” And he looked twice 
at the coin in his hand before pocketing it with 
evident satisfaction. 

Lonely as I was, and wished to be, I think 
that I never felt my loneliness as I did during 
the twenty-four hours which intervened be- 
tween Rattray’s departure and my own. They 
dragged like wet days by the sea, and the 
effect was as depressing. I have seldom been 
at such a loss for something to do ; and in my 
idleness I behaved like a child, wishing my 
new friend back again, or myself on the rail- 
way with my new friend, until I blushed for 
the beanstalk growth of my regard for him, an 
utter stranger, and a younger man. I am less 
ashamed of it now : he had come into my dark 
life like a lamp, and his going left a darkness 
deeper than before. 

In my dejection I took a new view of the 
90 


A Small Precaution 


night’s outrage. It was no common burglar’s 
work, for what had I worth stealing? It was 
the work of my unseen enemies, who dogged 
me in the street, they alone knew why ; the 
doctor had called these hallucinations, and I 
had forced myself to agree with the doctor; 
but I could not deceive myself in my present 
mood. I remembered the steps, the steps — 
the stopping when I stopped — the drawing 
away in the crowded streets — the closing up 
in quieter places. Why had I never looked 
round ? Why ? because till to-day I had 
thought it mere vulgar curiosity; because a 
few had bored me, I had imagined the many 
at my heels ; but now I knew — I knew ! It 
was the few again : a few who hated me even 
unto death. 

The idea took such a hold upon me that I 
did not trouble my head with reasons and mo- 
tives. Certain persons had designs upon 
my life; that was enough for me. On the 
whole, the thought was stimulating; it set a 
new value on existence, and it roused a cer- 
tain amount of spirit even in me. I would 
give the fellows another chance before I left 
town. They should follow me once more, 
and this time to some purpose. Last night 
9 1 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


they had left a knife on me ; to-night I would 
have a keepsake ready for them. 

Hitherto I had gone unarmed since my 
landing, which, perhaps, was no more than 
my duty as a civilized citizen. On Black Hill 
Flats, however, I had formed another habit, 
of which I should never have broken myself 
so easily, but for the fact that all the firearms 
I ever had were reddening and rotting at the 
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I now went 
out and bought me such a one as I had never 
possessed before. 

The revolver was then in its infancy ; but it 
did exist; and by dusk I was owner of as 
fine a specimen as could be procured in the 
City of London. It had but five chambers, but 
the barrel was ten inches long ; one had to cap 
it, and to put in the powder and the wadded 
bullet separately; but the last-named would 
have killed an elephant. The oak case that I 
bought with it cumbers my desk as I write, 
and, shut, you would think that it had never 
contained anything more lethal than fruit- 
knives. I open it, and there are the green- 
baize compartments, one with a box of percus- 
sion caps, still apparently full, another that 
could not contain many more wadded-bullets, 
and a third with a powder-horn which can 
92 


A Small Precaution 

never have been much lighter. Within the 
lid is a label bearing the makers’ names ; the 
gentlemen themselves are unknown to me, 
even if they are still alive ; nevertheless, after 
five-and-forty years, let me dip my pen to 
Messrs. Deane, Adams and Deane ! 

That night I left this case in my room, 
locked, and the key in my waistcoat pocket ; in 
the right-hand side-pocket of my overcoat I 
carried my Deane-and-Adams, loaded in every 
chamber ; also my right hand, as innocently 
as you could wish. And just that night I was 
not followed ! * I walked across Regent’s 

Park, and I dawdled on Primrose Hill, with- 
out the least result. Down I turned into the 
Avenue Road, and presently was strolling 
between green fields towards Finchley. The 
moon was up, but nicely shaded by a thin 
coating of clouds which extended across the 
sky : it was an ideal night for it. It was also 
my last night in town, and I did want to give 
the beggars their last chance. But they did 
not even attempt to avail themselves of it : 
never once did they follow me : my ears were 
in too good training to make any mistake. 
And the reason only dawned on me as I drove 
back disappointed : they had followed me al- 
ready to the gunsmith’s ! 

93 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Convinced of this, I entertained but little 
hope of another midnight visitor. Neverthe- 
less, I put my light out early, and sat a long 
time peeping through my blind ; but only an 
inevitable Tom, with back bunched up and tail 
erect, broke the moonlit profile of the back- 
garden wall ; and once more that disreputable 
music (which none the less had saved my life) 
was the only near sound all night. 

I felt very reluctant to pack Deane and 
Adams away in his case next morning, and the 
case in my portmanteau, where I could not get 
at it in case my unknown friends took it into 
their heads to accompany me out of town. In 
the hope that they would, I kept him loaded, 
and in the same overcoat pocket, until late in 
the afternoon, when, being very near my 
northern destination, and having the compart- 
ment to myself, I locked the toy away with 
considerable remorse for the price I had paid 
for it. All down the line I had kept an 
eye for suspicious characters with an eye upon 
me; but even my self-consciousness failed to 
discover one; and I reached my haven of 
peace, and of fresh fell air, feeling, I suppose, 
much like any other fool who has spent his 
money upon a white elephant. 

94 


CHAPTER IX 


MY CONVALESCENT HOME 

The man Braithwaite met me at the sta- 
tion with a spring-cart. The very porters 
seemed to expect me, and my luggage was in 
the cart before I had given up my ticket. Nor 
had we started when I first noticed that 
Braithwaite did not speak when I spoke to 
him. On the way, however, a more flagrant 
instance recalled young Rattray’s remark, 
that the man was “not like other people.” I 
had imagined it to refer to a mental, not a 
physical, defect; whereas it was clear to me 
now that my prospective landlord was stone- 
deaf, and I presently discovered him to be 
dumb as well. Thereafter I studied him with 
some attention during our drive of four or five 
miles. I called to mind the theory that an in- 
nate physical deficiency is seldom without its 
moral counterpart, and I wondered how far 
this would apply to the deaf-mute at my side, 
who was ill-grown, wizened, and puny into the 
bargain. The brow-beaten face of him was 
95 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


certainly forbidding, and he thrashed his horse 
up the hills in a dogged, vindictive, thorough- 
going way which at length made me jump out 
and climb one of them on foot. It was the 
only form of protest that occurred to me. 

The evening was damp and thick. It 
melted into night as we drove. I could form 
no impression of the country, but this seemed 
desolate enough. I believe we met no living 
soul on the high-road which we followed for 
the first three miles or more. At length we 
turned into a narrow lane, with a stiff stone 
wall on either hand, and this eventually led us 
past the lights of what appeared to be a large 
farm ; it was really a small hamlet ; and now we 
were nearing our destination. Gates had to be 
opened, and my poor driver breathed hard 
from the continual getting down and up. In 
the end a long and heavy cart-track brought 
us to the loneliest light that I have ever seen. 
It shone on the side of a hill — in the heart of 
an open wilderness — as solitary as a beacon- 
light at sea. It was the light of the cottage 
which was to be my temporary home. 

A very tall, gaunt woman stood in the door- 
way against the inner glow. She advanced 
with a loose long stride, and invited me to 
96 


My Convalescent Home 

enter in a voice harsh (I took it) from disuse. 
I was warming myself before the kitchen fire 
when she came in carrying my heaviest box as 
though it had nothing in it. I ran to take it 
from her, for the box was full of books, but 
she shook her head, and was on the stairs with 
it before I could intercept her. 

I conceive that very few men are attracted 
by abnormal strength in a woman ; we cannot 
help it ; and yet it was not her strength which 
first repelled me in Mrs. Braithwaite. It was 
a combination of attributes. She had a poll 
of very dirty and untidy red hair; her eyes 
were set close together; she had the jowl of 
the traditional prize-fighter. But far more 
disagreeable than any single feature was the 
woman's expression, or rather the expression 
which I caught her assuming naturally, and 
banishing with an effort for my benefit. To 
me she was strenuously civil in her uncouth 
way. But I saw her give her husband one 
look, as he staggered in with my comparatively 
light portmanteau, which she instantly 
snatched out of his feeble arms. I saw this 
look again before the evening was out, and it 
was such a one as Braithwaite himself had 
fixed upon his horse as he flogged it up the 
hills. 


97 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


I began to wonder how the young squire 
had found it in his conscience to recommend 
such a pair. I wondered less when the wom- 
an finally ushered me upstairs to my rooms. 
These were small and rugged, but eminently 
snug and clean. In each a good fire blazed 
cheerfully ; my portmanteau was already un- 
strapped, the table in the sitting-room already 
laid ; and I could not help looking twice at the 
silver and the glass, so bright was their condi- 
tion, so good their quality. Mrs. Braithwaite 
watched me from the door. 

“I doubt you’ll be thinking them’s our 
own,” said she. “I wish they were ; t’ squire 
sent ’em in this afternoon.” 

“For my use?” 

“Ay ; I doubt he thought what we had our- 
selves wasn’t good enough. An’ it’s him ’at 
sent t’ armchair, t’ bed-linen, t’ bath, an’ that 
there lookin’-glass an’ all.” 

She had followed me into the bedroom, 
where I looked with redoubled interest at each 
object as she mentioned it, and it was in the 
glass — a masqueline shaving-glass — that I 
caught my second glimpse of my landlady’s 
evil expression — levelled this time at my- 
self. 


98 


My Convalescent Home 

I instantly turned round and told her that I 
thought it very kind of Mr. Rattray, but that, 
for my part, I was not a luxurious man, and 
that I felt rather sorry the matter had not been 
left entirely in her hands. She retired seem- 
ingly mollified, and she took my sympathy 
with her, though I was none the less pleased 
and cheered by my new friend's zeal for my 
comfort ; there were even flowers on my table, 
without a doubt from Kirby Hall. 

And in another matter the squire had not 
misled me : the woman was an excellent plain 
cook. I expected ham and eggs. Sure 
enough, this was my dish, but done to a turn. 
The eggs were new and all unbroken, the ham 
so lean and yet so tender, that I would not 
have exchanged my humble, hearty meal for 
the best dinner served that night in London. 
It made a new man of me, after my long jour- 
ney and my cold, damp drive. I was for chat- 
ting with Mrs. Braithwaite when she came up 
to clear away. I thought she might be glad 
to talk after the life she must lead with her 
afflicted husband, but it seemed to have had 
the opposite effect on her. All I elicited was 
an ambiguous statement as to the distance be- 
tween the cottage and the hall ; it was “not so 
LifC, 99 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


far.” And so she left me to my pipe and to 
my best night yet, in the stillest spot I have 
ever slept in on dry land; one heard nothing 
but the bubble of a beck ; and it seemed very, 
very far away. 

A fine, bright morning showed me my new 
surroundings in their true colours ; even in the 
sunshine these were not very gay. But gai- 
ety was the last thing I wanted. Peace and 
quiet were my whole desire, and both were 
here, set in scenery at once lovely to the eye 
and bracing to the soul. 

From the cottage doorstep one looked upon 
a perfect panorama of healthy open English 
country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, 
green, undulating plateau, scored across and 
across by the stone walls of the north, and all 
dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden 
clouds with silv'er fringes. Miles away a 
church spire stuck like a spike out of the hol- 
low, and the smoke of a village dimmed the 
trees behind. No nearer habitation could I 
see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we 
passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden be- 
hind some hillocks to the left. My landlady 
told me it was better than half a mile away, 
and “nothing when you get there ; no shop ; 
no post-office ; not even a public-house.” 


ioo 


My Convalescent Home 

I inquired in which direction lay the hall. 
She pointed to the nearest trees, a small forest 
of stunted oaks, which shut in the view to the 
right, after quarter-of-a-mile of a bare and 
rugged valley. Through this valley twisted 
the beck which I had heard faintly in the 
night. It ran through the oak-plantation and 
so to the sea, some two or three miles further 
on, said my landlady ; but nobody would have 
thought it was so near. 

“T’ squire was to be away to-day,” observed 
the woman, with the broad vowel sound which 
I shall not attempt to reproduce in print. 
“He was going to Lancaster, I believe.” 

“So I understood,” said I. “I didn’t think 
of troubling him, if that’s what you mean. 
I’m going to take his advice and fish the beck.” 

And I proceeded to do so after a hearty early 
dinner : the keen, chill air was doing me good 
already : the “ perfect quiet ” was finding its 
way into my soul. I blessed my specialist, I 
blessed Squire Rattray, I blessed the very vil- 
lains who had brought us within each other’s 
ken ; and nowhere was my thanksgiving more 
fervent than in the deep cleft threaded by the 
beck; for here the shrewd yet gentle wind 
passed completely overhead, and the silence 


IOI 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


was purged of oppression by the ceaseless 
symphony of clear water running over clean 
stones. 

But it was no day for fishing, and no place 
for the fly, though I went through the form of 
throwing one for several hours. Here the 
stream merely rinsed its bed, there it stood so 
still, in pools of liquid amber, that, when the 
sun shone, the very pebbles showed their 
shadows in the deepest places. Of course I 
caught nothing ; but, towards the close of the 
gold-brown afternoon, I made yet another 
new acquaintance, in the person of a little old 
clergyman who attacked me pleasantly from 
the rear. 

“ Bad day for fishing, sir,” croaked the 
cheery voice which first informed me of his 
presence. “ Ah, I knew it must be a stran- 
ger,” he cried as I turned and he hopped down 
to my side with the activity of a much younger 
man. 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I only came down from 
London yesterday. I find the spot so de- 
lightful that I haven’t bothered much about 
the sport. Still, I’ve had about enough of it 
now.” And I prepared to take my rod to 
pieces. 


102 


My Convalescent Home 

“ Spot and sport ! ” laughed the old gentle- 
man. “Didn’t mean it for a pun, I hope? 
Never could endure puns! So you came 
down yesterday, young gentleman, did you? 
And where may you be staying? ” 

I described the position of my cottage with- 
out the slightest hesitation ; for this parson did 
not scare me ; except in appearance he had so 
little in common with his type as I knew it. 
He had, however, about the shrewdest pair of 
eyes that I have ever seen, and my answer 
only served to intensify their open scrutiny. 

“ How on earth did you come to hear of a 
God-forsaken place like this ? ” said he, mak- 
ing use, I thought, of a somewhat stronger 
expression than quite became his cloth. 

“ Squire Rattray told me of it,” said I. 

“ Ha ! So you’re a friend of his, are you ? ” 
And his eyes went through and through me, 
like knitting-needles through a ball of wool. 

“ I could hardly call myself that,” said I. 
“ But Mr. Rattray has been very kind to me.” 

“ Meet him in town? ” 

I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, 
for his tone had dropped into the confidential, 
and I disliked it as much as this string of ques- 
tions from a stranger. 

103 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Long ago, sir ? ” he pursued. 

“ No, sir ; not long ago,” I retorted. 

“ May I ask your name ? ” said he. 

“ You may ask what you like/’ I cried, with 
a final reversal of all my first impressions of 
this impertinent old fellow ; “ but I’m hanged 
if I tell it you ! I am here for rest and quiet, 
sir. I don’t ask you your name. I can’t for 
the life of me see what right you have to ask 
me mine, or to question me at all, for that mat- 
ter.” 

He favoured me with a brief glance of ex- 
traordinary suspicion. It faded away in mere 
surprise, and, next instant, my elderly and 
reverend friend was causing me some com- 
punction by colouring like a boy. 

“ You may think my curiosity mere im- 
pertinence, sir,” said he ; “ you would think 
otherwise if you knew as much as I do of 
Squire Rattray’s friends, and how little you 
resemble the generality of them. You might 
even feel some sympathy for one of the neigh- 
bouring clergy, to whom this godless young 
man has been for years as a thorn in their 
side.” 

He spoke so gravely, and what he said was 
so easy to believe, that I could not but apolo- 
gise for my hasty words. 

104 


My Convalescent Home 

“ Don’t name it, sir,” said the clergyman ; 
“ you had a perfect right to resent my ques- 
tions, and I enjoy meeting young men of 
spirit ; but not when it’s an evil spirit, such as, 
I fear, possesses your friend! I do assure 
you, sir, that the best thing I have heard of 
him for years is the very little that you have 
told me. As a rule, to hear of him at all in 
this part of the world, is to wish that we had 
not heard. I see him coming, however, and 
shall detain you no longer, for I don’t deny 
that there is no love lost between us.” 

I looked round, and there was Rattray on 
the top of the bank, a long way to the left, 
coming towards me with a waving hat. An 
extraordinary ejaculation brought me to the 
right-about next instant. 

The old clergyman had slipped on a stone 
in mid-stream, and, as he dragged a dripping 
leg up the opposite bank, he had sworn an 
oath worthy of the “ godless young man ” 
who had put him to flight, and on whose de- 
merits he had descanted with so much elo- 
quence and indignation. 


105 


CHAPTER X 


WINE AND WEAKNESS 

“ Sporting old parson who knows how to 
swear ?” laughed Rattray. “ Never saw him 
in my life before ; wondered who the deuce he 
was.” 

“ Really? ” said I. “ He professed to know 
something of you.” 

“ Against me, you mean ? My dear Cole, 
don’t trouble to perjure yourself. I don’t 
mind, believe me. They’re easily shocked, 
these country clergy, and no doubt I’m a bug- 
bear to ’em. Yet, I could have sworn I’d 
never seen this one before. Let’s have an- 
other look.” 

We were walking away together. We 
turned on the top of the bank. And there the 
old clergyman was planted on the moorside, 
and watching us intently from under his hol- 
lowed hands. 

“ Well, I’m hanged ! ” exclaimed Rattray, 
as the hands fell and their owner beat a hasty 
retreat. My companion said no more; in- 
106 


Wine and Weakness 


deed, for some minutes we pursued our way in 
silence. And I thought that it was with an 
effort that he broke into sudden inquiries con- 
cerning my journey and my comfort at the 
cottage. 

This gave me an opportunity of thanking 
him for his little attentions. “ It was awfully 
good of you/’ said I, taking his arm as though 
I had known him all my life; nor do I think 
there was another living man with whom I 
would have linked arms at that time. 

“Good?” cried he. “Nonsense, my dear 
sir! I’m only afraid you find it devilish 
rough. But, at all events, you’re coming to 
dine with me to-night.” 

“ Am I ? ” I asked, smiling. 

“ Rather ! ” said he. “ My time here is 
short enough. I don’t lose sight of you again 
between this and midnight.” 

“ It’s most awfully good of you,” said I 
again. 

“Wait till you see! You’ll find it rough 
enough at my place ; all my retainers are out 
for the day at a local show.” 

“ Then I certainly shall not give you the 
trouble ” 

He interrupted me with his jovial laugh. 

i°7 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ My good fellow,” he cried, “ that’s the fun 
of it ! How do you suppose I’ve been spend- 
ing the day ? Told you I was going to Lan- 
caster, did I? Well, I’ve been cooking our 
dinner instead— laying the table— getting up 
the wines — never had such a joke ! Give you 
my word, I almost forgot I was in the wilder- 
ness ! ” 

“ So you’re quite alone, are you ? ” 

“ Yes ; as much so as that other beggar who 
was monarch of all he surveyed, his right there 
was none to dispute, from the what-is-it down 
to the glade ” 

“ I’ll come,” said I, as we reached the cot- 
tage. “ Only first you must let me make my- 
self decent.” 

“ You’re decent enough ! ” 

“ My boots are wet ; my hands ” 

“ All serene ! I’ll give you five minutes.” 

And I left him outside, flourishing a hand- 
some watch, while, on my way upstairs, I 
paused to tell Mrs. Braithwaite that I was din- 
ing at the hall. She was busy cooking, and I 
felt prepared for her unpleasant expression ; 
but she showed no annoyance at my news. I 
formed the impression that it was no news to 
her. And next minute I heard a whispering 
108 


Wine and Weakness 


below ; it was unmistakable in that silent cot- 
tage, where not a word had reached me yet, 
save in conversation to which I was myself a 
party. 

I looked out of window. Rattray I could 
no longer see. And I confess that I felt both 
puzzled and annoyed until we walked away 
together, when it was his arm which was im- 
mediately thrust through mine. 

“ A good soul, Jane,” said he ; “ though she 
made an idiotic marriage, and leads a life 
which might spoil the temper of an archangel. 
She was my nurse when I was a youngster, 
Cole, and we never meet without a yarn.” 
Which seemed natural enough ; still I failed 
to perceive why they need yarn in whispers. 

Kirby Hall proved startlingly near at hand. 
We descended the bare valley to the right, we 
crossed the beck upon a plank, were in the 
oak-plantation about a minute, and there was 
the hall upon the farther side. 

And a queer old place it seemed, half farm, 
half feudal castle: fowls strutting at large 
about the back premises (which we were com- 
pelled to skirt), and then a front door of pon- 
derous oak, deep-set between walls fully six 
feet thick, and studded all over with wooden 
109 

r 



Dead Men Tell No Tales 


pegs. The faqade, indeed, was wholly grim, 
with a castellated tower at one end, and a 
number of narrow, sunken windows looking 
askance on the wreck and ruin of a once prim, 
old-fashioned, high-walled garden. I thought 
that Rattray might have shown more respect 
for the house of his ancestors. It put me in 
mind of a neglected grave. And yet I could 
forgive a bright young fellow for never com- 
ing near so desolate a domain. 

We dined delightfully in a large and lofty 
hall, formerly used (said Rattray) as a court- 
room. The old judgment seat stood back 
against the wall, and our table was the one 
at which the justices had been wont to sit. 
Then the chamber had been low-ceiled ; now 
it ran to the roof, and we ate our dinner be- 
neath a square of fading autumn sky, with I 
wondered how many ghosts looking down on 
us from the oaken gallery ! I was interested, 
impressed, awed not a little, and yet all in a 
way which afforded my mind the most wel- 
come distraction from itself and from the past. 
To Rattray, on the other hand, it was rather 
sadly plain that the place was both a burden 
and a bore ; in fact he vowed it was the damp- 
est and the dullest old ruin under the sun, and 


IIO 


Wine and Weakness 


that he would sell it to-morrow if he could 
find a lunatic to buy. His want of sentiment 
struck me as his one deplorable trait. Yet 
even this displayed his characteristic merit of 
frankness. Nor was it at all unpleasant to 
hear his merry, boyish laughter ringing round 
hall and gallery, ere it died away against a 
dozen closed doors. 

And there were other elements of good 
cheer: a log fire blazing heartily in the old 
dog-grate, casting a glow over the stone flags, 
a reassuring flicker into the darkest corner: 
cold viands of the very best : and the finest old 
Madeira that has ever passed my lips. 

Now, all my life I have been a “ moderate 
drinker ” in the most literal sense of that 
slightly elastic term. But at the sad time of 
which I am trying to write, I was almost an 
abstainer, from the fear, the temptation — of 
seeking oblivion in strong waters. To give 
way then was to go on giving way. I realised 
the danger, and I took stern measures. Not 
stern enough, however; for what I did not 
realise was my weak and nervous state, in 
which a glass would have the same effect on 
me as three or four upon a healthy man. 

Heaven knows how much or how little I 


hi 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


took that evening! I can swear it was the 
smaller half of either bottle— and the second 
we never finished — but the amount matters 
nothing. Even me it did not make grossly 
tipsy. But it warmed my blood, it cheered my 
heart, it excited my brain, and — it loosened 
my tongue. It set me talking, with a freedom 
of which I should have been incapable in my 
normal moments, on a subject whereof I had 
never before spoken of my own free will. 

And yet the will to speak — to my present 
companion — was no novelty. I had felt it at 
our first meeting in the private hotel. His 
tact, his sympathy, his handsome face, his per- 
sonal charm, his frank friendliness, had one 
and all tempted me to bore this complete 
stranger with unsolicited confidences for 
which an inquisitive relative might have 
angled in vain. And the temptation was the 
stronger because I knew in my heart that I 
should not bore the young squire at all ; that 
he was anxious enough to hear my story from 
my own lips, but too good a gentleman inten- 
tionally to betray such anxiety. Vanity was 
also in the impulse. A vulgar newspaper 
prominence had been my final (and very genu- 
ine) tribulation ; but to please and to interest 

I 12 




Wine and Weakness 

one so pleasing and so interesting to me, was 
another and a subtler thing. And then there 
was his sympathy — shall I add his admiration ? 
— for my reward. 

I do not pretend that I argued thus delib- 
erately in my heated and excited brain. I 
merely hold that all these small reasons and 
motives were there, fused and exaggerated by 
the liquor which was there as well. Nor can 
I say positively that Rattray put no leading 
questions ; only that I remember none which 
had that sound ; and that, once started, I am 
afraid I needed only too little encouragement 
to run on and on. 

Well, I was set going before we got up from 
the table. I continued in an armchair that 
my host dragged from a little book-lined room 
adjoining the hall. I finished on my legs, my 
back to the fire, my hands beating wildly to- 
gether. I had told my dear Rattray of my 
own accord, more than living man had ex- 
tracted from me yet. He interrupted me very 
little ; never once until I came to the murder- 
ous attack by Santos on the drunken steward. 

“ The brute ! ” cried Rattray. “ The cow- 
ardly, cruel, foreign devil ! And you never let 
out one word of that ! ” 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ What was the good ? ” said I. “ They 
are all gone now — all gone to their account. 
Every man of us was a brute at the last. 
There was nothing to be gained by telling the 
public that.” 

He let me go on until I came to another 
point which I had hitherto kept to myself : the 
condition of the dead mate’s fingers : the cries 
that the sight of them had recalled. 

“ That Portuguese villain again ! ” cried my 
companion, fairly leaping from the chair 
which I had left and he had taken. “ It was 
the work of the same cane that killed the 
steward. Don’t tell me an Englishman would 
have done it ; and yet you said nothing about 
that either ! ” 

It was my first glimpse of this side of my 
young host’s character. Nor did I admire 
him the less, in his spirited indignation, be- 
cause much of this was clearly against myself. 
His eyes flashed. His face was white. I sud- 
denly found myself the cooler man of the 
two. 

“ My dear fellow, do consider ! ” said I. 
“ What possible end could have been served 
by my stating what I couldn’t prove against 
a man who could never be brought to book in 
114 


Wine and Weakness 


this world? Santos was punished as he de- 
served ; his punishment was death, and there’s 
an end on’t.” 

“ You may be right,” said Rattray, “ but it 
makes my blood boil to hear such a story. 
Forgive me if I have spoken strongly ; ” and 
he paced his hall for a little in an agitation 
which made me like him better and better. 
“ The cold-blooded villain ! ” he kept mutter- 
ing ; “ the infernal, foreign, blood-thirsty ras- 
cal ! Perhaps you were right ; it couldn’t 
have done any good, I know ; but — I only wish 
he’d lived for us to hang him, Cole ! Why, a 
beast like that is capable of anything : I won- 
der if you’ve told me the worst even now ? ” 
And he stood before me, with candid suspicion 
in his fine, frank eyes. 

“ What makes you say that ? ” said I, rather 
nettled. 

“ I shan’t tell you if it’s going to rile you, 
old fellow,” was his reply. And with it reap- 
peared the charming youth whom I found it 
impossible to resist. “ Heaven knows you 
have had enough to worry you ! ” he added in 
his kindly, sympathetic voice. 

“ So much,” said I, “ that you cannot add 
to it, my dear Rattray. Now, then ! Why do 
you think there was something worse ? ” 
ii5 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“You hinted as much in town: rightly or 
wrongly I gathered there was something you 
would never speak about to living man/’ 

I turned from him with a groan. 

“ Ah ! but that had nothing to do with San- 
tos ” 

“ Are you sure ? ” he cried. 

“ No/’ I murmured; “ it had something to 
do with him, in a sense ; but don’t ask me any 
more.” And I leaned my forehead on the 
high oak mantelpiece, and groaned again. 

His hand was upon my shoulder. 

“ Do tell me,” he urged. I was silent. He 
pressed me further. In my fancy, both hand 
and voice shook with his sympathy. 

“ He had a step-daughter,” said I at last. 

“Yes? Yes?” 

“ I loved her. That was all.” 

His hand dropped from my shoulder. I re- 
mained standing, stooping, thinking only of 
her whom I had lost for ever. The silence was 
intense. I could hear the wind sighing in the 
oaks without, the logs burning softly away at 
my feet. And so we stood until the voice of 
Rattray recalled me from the deck of the Lady 
Jermyn and my lost love’s side. 

“ So that was all ! ” 

116 


Wine and Weakness 

I turned and met a face I could not read. 

“ Was it not enough ? ” cried I. “ What 
more would you have ? ” 

“ I expected some more — foul play ! ” 

“ Ah ! ” I exclaimed bitterly. “ So that was 
all that interested you! No, there was no 
more foul play that I know of ; and if there 
was, I don’t care. Nothing matters to me but 
one thing. Now that you know what that is, 
I hope you’re satisfied.” 

It was no way to speak to one’s host. Yet 
I felt that he had pressed me unduly. I hated 
myself for my final confidence, and his want of 
sympathy made me hate him too. In my 
weakness, however, I was the natural prey of 
violent extremes. His hand flew out to me. 
He was about to speak. A moment more and 
I had doubtless forgiven him. But another 
sound came instead, and made the pair of us 
start and stare. It was the soft shutting of 
some upstairs door. 

“ I thought we had the house to our- 
selves ? ” cried I, my miserable nerves on edge 
in an instant. 

“ So did I,” he answered, very pale. “ My 
servants must have come back. By the Lord 
Harry, they shall hear of this ! ” 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clat- 
tering up some stone stairs, and in a trice he 
was running along the gallery overhead ; in 
another I heard him railing behind some upper 
door that he had flung open and banged behind 
him; then his voice dropped, and finally died 
away. I was left some minutes in the oppres- 
sively silent hall, shaken, startled, ashamed of 
my garrulity, aching to get away. When he 
returned it was by another of the many closed 
doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat in 
hand. He was wearing his happiest look un- 
til he saw my hat. 

“ Not going?’’ he cried. “ My dear Cole, 
I can’t apologise sufficiently for my abrupt de- 
sertion of you, much less for the cause. It 
was my man, just come in from the show, and 
gone up the back way. I accused him of lis- 
tening to our conversation. Of course he de- 
nies it; but it really doesn’t matter, as I’m 
sorry to say he’s much too ‘ fresh ’ (as they 
call it down here) to remember anything to- 
morrow morning. I let him have it, I can tell 
you. Varlet! Caitiff! But if you bolt off 
on the head of it, I shall go back and sack him 
into the bargain ! ” 

I assured him I had my own reasons for 
118 


Wine and Weakness 

wishing to retire early. He could have no 
conception of my weakness, my low and ner- 
vous condition of body and mind ; much as I 
had enjoyed myself, he must really let me go. 
Another glass of wine, then ? Just one more ? 
No, I had drunk too much already. I was in 
no state to stand it. And I held out my hand 
with decision. 

Instead of taking it he looked at me very 
hard. 

“ The place doesn’t suit you,” said he. “ I 
see it doesn’t, and I’m devilish sorry ! Take 
my advice and try something milder ; now do, 
to-morrow ; for I should never forgive myself 
if it made you worse instead of better ; and the 
air is too strong for lots of people.” 

I was neither too ill nor too vexed to laugh 
outright in his face. 

“ It’s not the air,” said I ; “ it’s that splendid 
old Madeira of yours that was too strong for. 
me, if you like! No, no, Rattray, you don’t 
get rid of me so cheaply — much as you seem 
to want to ! ” 

“ I was only thinking of you,” he rejoined, 
with a touch of pique that convinced me of his 
sincerity. “ Of course I want you to stop, 
though I shan’t be here many days ; but I feel 
119 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


responsible for you, Cole, and that’s the fact. 
Think you can find your way ? ” he continued, 
accompanying me to the gate, a postern in the 
high garden wall. “ Hadn’t you better have 
a lantern ? ” 

No ; it was unnecessary. I could see splen- 
didly, had the bump of locality and as many 
more lies as would come to my tongue. I was 
indeed burning to be gone. 

A moment later I feared that I had shown 
this too plainly. For his final handshake was 
hearty enough to send me away something 
ashamed of my precipitancy, and with a fur- 
ther sense of having shown him small grati- 
tude for his kindly anxiety on my behalf. I 
would behave differently to-morrow. Mean- 
while I had new regrets. 

At first it was comparatively easy to see, for 
the lights of the house shone faintly among 
the nearer oaks. But the moon was hidden 
behind heavy clouds, and I soon found myself 
at a loss in a terribly dark zone of timber. Al- 
ready I had left the path. I felt in my pocket 
for matches. I had none. 

My head was now clear enough, only de- 
servedly heavy. I was still quarrelling with 
myself for my indiscretions and my incivilities, 


120 


Wine and Weakness 

one and all the result of his wine and my weak- 
ness, and this new predicament (another and 
yet more vulgar result) was the final mortifica- 
tion. I swore aloud. I simply could not see 
a foot in front of my face. Once I proved it 
by running my head hard against a branch. 
I was hopelessly and ridiculously lost within 
a hundred yards of the hall ! 

Some minutes I floundered, ashamed to go 
back, unable to proceed for the trees and the 
darkness. I heard the beck running over its 
stones. I could still see an occasional glim- 
mer from the windows I had left. But the 
light was now on this side, now on that ; the 
running water chuckled in one ear after the 
other; there was nothing for it but to return 
in all humility for the lantern which I had been 
so foolish as to refuse. 

And as I resigned myself to this imperative 
though inglorious course, my heart warmed 
once more to the jovial young squire. He 
would laugh, but not unkindly, at my gro- 
tesque dilemma ; at the thought of his laugh- 
ter I began to smile myself. If he gave me 
another chance I would smoke that cigar with 
him before starting home afresh, and remove, 
from my own mind no less than from his, all 
125 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


ill impressions. After all it was not his fault 
that I had taken too much of his wine ; but a 
far worse offence was to be sulky in one’s cups. 
I would show him that I was myself again in 
all respects. I have admitted that I was tem- 
porarily, at all events, a creature of extreme 
moods. It was in this one that I retraced my 
steps towards the lights, and at length let my- 
self into the garden by the postern at which I 
had shaken Rattray’s hand not ten minutes 
before. 

Taking heart of grace, I stepped up jauntily 
to the porch. The weeds muffled my steps. 
I myself had never thought of doing so, when 
all at once I halted in a vague terror. Through 
the deep lattice windows I had seen into the 
lighted hall. And Rattray was once more 
seated at his table, a little company of men 
around him. 

I crept nearer, and my heart stopped. Was 
I delirious, or raving mad with wine ? Or had 
the sea given up its dead ? 


122 


CHAPTER XI 


I LIVE AGAIN 

Squire Rattray, as I say, was seated at the 
head of his table, where the broken meats still 
lay as he and I had left them ; his fingers, I re- 
member, were playing with a crust, and his 
eyes fixed upon a distant door, as he leant back 
in his chair. Behind him hovered the nigger 
of the Lady Jermyn, whom I had been the 
slower to recognize, had not her skipper sat 
facing me on the squire’s right. Yes, there 
was Captain Harris in the flesh, eating heartily 
between great gulps of wine, instead of feed- 
ing the fishes as all the world supposed. And 
nearer still, nearer me than any, with his back 
to my window but his chair slued round a lit- 
tle, so that he also could see that door, and I 
his profile, sat Joaquin Santos with his 
cigarette ! 

None spoke; all seemed waiting; and all 
were silent but the captain, whose vulgar 
champing reached me through the crazy lat- 
123 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

tice, as I stood spellbound and petrified with- 
out. 

They say that a drowning man lives his life 
again before the last; but my own fight with 
the sea provided me with no such moments 
of vivid and rapid retrospect as those during 
which I stood breathless outside the lighted 
windows of Kirby Hall. I landed again. I 
was dogged day and night. I set it down to 
nerves and notoriety ; but took refuge in a pri- 
vate hotel. One followed me, engaged the 
next room, set a watch on all my movements ; 
another came in by the window to murder me 
in my bed ; no party to that, the first one nev- 
ertheless turned the outrage to account, 
wormed himself into my friendship on the 
strength of it, and lured me hither, an easy 
prey. And here was the gang of them, to 
meet me ! No wonder Rattray had not let me 
see him off at the station ; no wonder I had not 
been followed that night. Every link I saw in 
its right light instantly. Only the motive re- 
mained obscure. Suspicious circumstances 
swarmed upon my slow perception : how inno- 
cent I had been ! Less innocent, however, 
than wilfully and wholly reckless : what had it 
mattered with whom I made friends? What 


124 


I Live Again 

had anything mattered to me ? What did any- 
thing matter — 

I thought my heart had snapped ! 

Why were they watching that door, Joaquin 
Santos and the young squire? Whom did 
they await? I knew! Oh, I knew! My 
heart leaped, my blood danced, my eyes lay in 
wait with theirs. Everything began to mat- 
ter once more. It was as though the ma- 
chinery of my soul, long stopped, had sudden- 
ly been set in motion ; it was as though I was 
born again. 

How long we seemed to wait I need not say. 
It cannot have been many moments in reality, 
for Santos was blowing his rings of smoke in 
the direction of the door, and the first that I 
noticed were but dissolving when it opened — 
and the best was true ! One instant I saw her 
very clearly, in the light of a candle which she 
carried in its silver stick ; then a mist bjinded 
me, and I fell on my knees in the rank bed into 
which I had stepped, to give such thanks to 
the Almighty as this heart has never felt before 
or since. And I remained kneeling; for now 
my face was on a level with the sill ; and when 
my eyes could see again, there stood my dar- 
ling before them in the room. 

125 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Like a queen she stood, in the very travel- 
ling cloak in which I had seen her last ; it was 
tattered now, but she held it close about her 
as though a shrewd wind bit her to the core. 
Her sweet face was all peeked and pale in the 
candle-light: she who had been a child was 
come to womanhood in a few weeks. But a 
new spirit flashed in her dear eyes, a new 
strength hardened her young lips. She stood 
as an angel brought to book by devils ; and so 
noble was her calm defiance, so serene her 
scorn, that, as I watched and listened, all pres- 
ent fear for her passed out of my heart. 

The first sound was the hasty rising of 
young Rattray ; he was at Eva’s side next in- 
stant, essaying to lead her to his chair, with a 
flush which deepened as she repulsed him 
coldly. 

“ You have sent for me, and I have come,” 
said she. “ But I prefer not to sit down in 
your presence ; and what you have to say, you 
will be good enough to say as quickly as pos- 
sible, that I may go again before I am — 
stifled ! ” 

It was her one hot word ; aimed at them all, 
it seemed to me to fall like a lash on Rattray's 
cheek, bringing the blood to it like lightning. 

126 


I Live Again 

But it was Santos who snatched the cigarette 
from his mouth, and opened upon the defence- 
less girl in a torrent of Portuguese, yellow 
with rage, and a very windmill of lean arms 
and brown hands in the terrifying rapidity of 
his gesticulations. They did not terrify Eva 
Denison. When Rattray took a step towards 
the speaker, with flashing eyes, it was some 
word from Eva that checked him ; when San- 
tos was done, it was to Rattray that she turned 
with her answer. 

“ He calls me a liar for telling you that Mr. 
Cole knew all,” said she, thrilling me with my 
own name. “ Don’t you say anything,” she 
added, as the young man turned on Santos 
with a scowl ; “ you are one as wicked as the 
other, but there was a time when I thought 
differently of you : his character I have always 
known. Of the two evils, I prefer to speak to 
you.” 

Rattray bowed, humbly enough, I thought ; 
but my darling’s nostrils only curled the more. 

“ He calls me a liar,” she continued ; “ so 
may you all. Since you have found it out, I 
admit it freely and without shame ; one must 
be false in the hands of false fiends like all of 
you. Weakness is nothing to you; helpless- 
127 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


ness is nothing; you must be met with your 
own weapons, and so I lied in my sore ex- 
tremity to gain the one miserable advantage 
within my reach. He says you found me out 
by making friends with Mr. Cole. He says 
that Mr. Cole has been dining with you in this 
very room, this very night. You still tell the 
truth sometimes ; has that man — that demon 
— told it for once ? ” 

“ It is perfectly true,” said Rattray in a low 
voice. 

“ And poor Mr. Cole told you that he knew 
nothing of your villainy? ” 

“ I found out that he knew absolutely noth- 
ing — after first thinking otherwise.” 

“ Suppose he had known ? What would 
you have done ? ” 

Rattray said nothing. Santos shrugged as 
he lit a fresh cigarette. The captain went on 
with his supper. 

“ Ashamed to say ! ” cried Eva Denison. 
“ So you have some shame left still ! Well, I 
will tell you. You would have murdered him, 
as you murdered all the rest ; you would have 
killed him in cold blood, as I wish and pray 
that you would kill me ! ” 

The young fellow faced her, white to the 
128 


I Live Again 

lips. “ You have no right to say that, Miss 
Denison ! ” he cried. “ I may be bad, but, as I 
am ready to answer for my sins, the crime of 
murder is not among them.” 

Well, it is still some satisfaction to remem- 
ber that my love never punished me with such 
a look as was the young squire’s reward for 
this protestation. The curl of the pink nos- 
trils, the parting of the proud lips, the gleam 
of the sound white teeth, before a word was 
spoken, were more than I, for one, could have 
borne. For I did not see the grief underlying 
the scorn, but actually found it in my heart to 
pity this poor devil of a Rattray: so humbly 
fell those fine eyes of his, so like a dog did he 
stand, waiting to be whipped. 

“Yes; you are very innocent! ” she began 
at last, so softly that I could scarcely hear. 
“ You have not committed murder, so you 
say; let it stand to your credit by all means. 
You have no blood upon your hands ; you say 
so; that is enough. No! you are compar- 
atively innocent, I admit. All you have done 
is to make murder easy for others ; to get oth- 
ers to do the dirty work, and then shelter them 
and share the gain ; all you need have on your 
conscience is every life that was lost with the 
129 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Lady Jermyn , and every soul that lost itself in 
losing them. You call that innocence? Then 
give me honest guilt ! Give me the man who 
set fire to the ship, and who sits there eating 
his supper; he is more of a man than you. 
Give me the wretch who has beaten men to 
death before my eyes ; there’s something great 
about a monster like that, there’s something to 
loathe. His assistant is only little — mean — 
despicable ! ” 

Loud and hurried in its wrath, low and de- 
liberate in its contempt, all this was uttered 
with a furious and abnormal eloquence, which 
would have struck me, loving her, to the 
ground. On Rattray it had a different effect. 
His head lifted as she heaped abuse upon it, 
until he met her flashing eye with that of a 
man very thankful to take his deserts and 
something more ; and to mine he was least 
despicable when that last word left her lips. 
When he saw that it was her last, he took her 
candle (she had put it down on the ancient set- 
tle against the door), and presented it to her 
with another bow. And so without a word he 
led her to the door, opened it, and bowed yet 
lower as she swept out, but still without a tinge 
of mockery in the obeisance. 

130 


I Live Again 

He was closing the door after her when Joa- 
quin Santos reached it. 

“ Diablo ! ” cried he. “ Why let her go ? 
We have not done with her.” 

“ That doesn't matter ; she is done with us,” 
was the stern reply. 

“ It does matter,” retorted Santos ; “ what 
is more, she is my step-daughter, and back 
she shall come ! ” 

“ She is also my visitor, and I’m damned if 
you’re going to make her ! ” 

An instant Santos stood, his back to me, his 
fingers working, his neck brown with blood ; 
then his coat went into creases across the 
shoulders, and he was shrugging still as he 
turned away. 

“Your veesitor!” said he. “Your veesi- 
tor! Your veesitor ! ” 

Harris laughed outright as he raised his 
glass ; the hot young squire had him by the 
collar, and the wine was spilling on the cloth, 
as I rose very cautiously and crept back to the 
path. 

“ When rogues fall out ! ” I was thinking to 
myself. “ I shall save her yet — I shall save 
my darling! ” 

Already I was accustomed to the thought 

131 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


that she still lived, and to the big heart she 
had set beating in my feeble frame ; already 
the continued existence of these villains, with 
the first dim inkling of their villainy, was ceas- 
ing to be a novelty in a brain now quickened 
and prehensile beyond belief. And yet — but 
a few minutes had I knelt at the window — but 
a few more was it since Rattray and I had 
shaken hands ! 

Not his visitor; his prisoner, without a 
doubt ; but alive ! alive ! and neither guest nor 
prisoner for many hours more. O my love ! 
O my heart’s delight ! Now I knew why I 
was spared ; to save her ; to snatch her from 
these rascals ; to cherish and protect her ever- 
more ! 

All the past shone clear behind me ; the dark 
was lightness and the crooked straight. All 
the future lay clear ahead ; it presented no dif- 
ficulties yet ; a mad, ecstatic confidence was 
mine for the wildest, happiest moments of my 
life. • 

I stood upright in the darkness. I saw her 
light! 

It was ascending the tower at the building’s 
end; now in this window it glimmered, now 
in the one above. At last it was steady, high 
up near the stars, and I stole below. 

132 


I Live Again 

" Eva ! Eva ! ” 

There was no answer. Low as it was, my 
voice was alarming; it cooled and cautioned 
me. I sought little stones. I crept back to 
throw them. Ah God ! her form eclipsed that 
lighted slit in the grey stone tower. I heard 
her weeping high above me at her window. 

"Eva! Eva ! ” 

There was a pause, and then a little cry of 
gladness. 

" Is it Mr. Cole ? ” came in an eager whisper 
through her tears. 

"Yes! yes! I was outside the window. I 
heard everything ” 

" They will hear you! ” she cried softly, in a 
steadier voice. 

" No — listen ! ” They were quarrelling. 
Rattray’s voice was loud and angry. " They 
cannot hear,” I continued, in more cautious 
tones ; " they think I’m in bed and asleep half- 
a-mile away. Oh, thank God! I’ll get you 
away from them ; trust me, my love, my dar- 
ling!” 

In my madness I knew not what I said ; it 
was my wild heart speaking. Some moments 
passed before she replied. 

" Will you promise to do nothing I ask you 
not to do? ” 


i33 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Of course/* 

“ My life might answer for it ” 

“ I promise — I promise.” 

“ Then wait — hide — watch my light. When 
you see it back in the window, watch with all 
your eyes! I am going to write and then 
throw it out. Not another syllable! ” 

She was gone ; there was a long yellow slit 
in the masonry once more; her light burnt 
faint and far within. 

I retreated among some bushes and kept 
watch. 

The moon was skimming beneath the sur- 
face of a sea of clouds : now the black billows 
had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy 
bobbed among them. O for enough light, 
and no more ! 

In the hall the high voices were more sub- 
dued. I heard the captain’s tipsy laugh. My 
eyes fastened themselves upon that faint and 
lofty light, and on my heels I crouched among 
the bushes. 

The flame moved, flickered, and shone small 
but brilliant on the very sill. I ran forward 
on tip-toe. A white flake fluttered to my feet. 
I secured it and waited for one word ; none 
came ; but the window was softly shut. 

i34 


I Live Again 

I stood in doubt, the treacherous moonlight 
all over me now, and once more the window 
opened. 

“ Go quickly ! ” 

And again it was shut ; next moment I was 
stealing close by the spot where I had knelt. 
I saw within once more. 

• Harris nodded in his chair. The nigger 
had disappeared. Rattray was lighting a 
candle, and the Portuguese holding out his 
hand for the match. 

“Did you lock the gate, senhor?” asked 
Santos. 

“ No ; but I will now.” 

As I opened it I heard a door open within. 
I could hardly let the latch down again for the 
sudden trembling of my fingers. The key 
turned behind me ere I had twenty yards’ 
start. 

Thank God there was light enough now! 
I followed the beck. I found my way. I 
stood in the open valley, between the oak-plan- 
tation and my desolate cottage, and I kissed 
my tiny, twisted note again and again in a 
paroxysm of passion and of insensate joy. 
Then I unfolded it and held it to my eyes in 
the keen October moonshine. 

i35 


CHAPTER XII 


MY LADY’S BIDDING 

Scribbled in sore haste, by a very tremulous 
little hand, with a pencil, on the fly-leaf of 
some book, my darling’s message is still diffi- 
cult to read ; it was doubly so in the moonlight, 
five-and-forty autumns ago. My eyesight, 
however, was then perhaps the soundest thing 
about me, and in a little I had deciphered 
enough to guess correctly (as it proved) at the 
whole : — 

“ You say you heard everything just now, 
and there is no time for further explanations. 
I am in the hands of villains, but not ill-treat- 
ed, though they are one as bad as the other. 
You will not find it easy to rescue me. I don’t 
see how it is to be done. You have promised 
not to do anything I ask you not to do, and I 
implore you not to tell a soul until you have 
seen me again and heard more. You might 
just as well kill me as come back now with 
help . 

“You see you know nothing, though I told 
136 


My Lady’s Bidding 

them you knew all. And so you shall as soon 
as I can see you for five minutes face to face. 
In the meantime do nothing — know nothing 
when you see Mr. Rattray — unless you wish to 
be my death. 

“ It would have been possible last night, 
and it may be again to-morrow night. They 
all go out every night when they can, except 
Jose, who is left in charge. They are out 
from nine or ten till two or three ; if they are 
out to-morrow night my candle will be close 
to the window as- 1 shall put it when I have 
finished this. You can see my window from 
over the wall. If the light is in front you 
must climb the wall, for they will leave the 
gate locked. I shall see you and will bribe 
Jose to let me out for a turn. He has done 
it before for a bottle of wine. I can manage 
him. Can I trust to you? If you break your 
promise — but you will not? One of them 
would as soon kill me as smoke a cigarette, 
and the rest are under his thumb. I dare not 
write more. But my life is in your hands. 

“ Eva Denison/’ 

“ Oh ! beware of the woman Braithwaite ; 
she is about the worst of the gang.”* 

I could have burst out crying in my bitter 
137 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


discomfiture, mortification, and alarm : to 
think that her life was in my hands, and that 
it depended, not on that prompt action which 
was the one course I had contemplated, but on 
twenty-four hours of resolute inactivity! 

I would not think it. I refused the condi- 
tion. It took away my one prop, my one stay, 
that prospect of immediate measures which 
alone preserved in me such coolness as I had 
retained until now. I was cool no longer; 
where I had relied on practical direction I 
was baffled and hindered and driven mad ; on 
my honour I believe I was little less for some 
moments, groaning, cursing, and beating the 
air with impotent fists — in one of them my 
poor love’s letter crushed already to a ball. 

Danger and difficulty I had been prepared 
to face ; but the task that I was set was a hun- 
dredfold harder than any that had whirled 
through my teeming brain. To sit still ; to do 
nothing ; to pretend I knew nothing ; an hour 
of it would destroy my reason — and I was in- 
vited to wait twenty-four ! 

No ; my word was passed ; keep it I must. 
She knew the men, she must know best; and 
her life depended on my obedience : she made 
that so plain. Obey I must and would; to 

138 


My Lady’s Bidding 

make a start, I tottered over the plank that 
spanned the beck, and soon I saw the cottage 
against the moonlit sky. I came up to it. I 
drew back in sudden fear. It was alight up- 
stairs and down, and the gaunt strong figure 
of the woman Braithwaite stood out as I had 
seen it first, in the doorway, with the light 
showing warmly through her rank red hair. 

“Is that you, Mr. Cole?” she cried in a 
tone that she reserved for me; yet through 
the forced amiability there rang a note of gen- 
uine surprise. She had been prepared for me 
never to return at all ! 

My knees gave under me as I forced myself 
to advance ; but my wits returned with the ex- 
citement of the crisis, and I saw the way to 
turn my weakness into account. I made a 
false step on my way to the door; when I 
reached it I leant heavily against the jam, and 
I said with a slur that I felt unwell. I had 
certainly been flushed with wine when I left 
Rattray ; it would be no bad thing for him to 
hear that I had arrived quite tipsy at the cot- 
tage; should he discover I had been near an 
hour on the way, here was my explanation cut 
and dried. 

So I shammed a degree of intoxication with 
i39 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


apparent success, and Jane Braithwaite gave 
me her arm up the stairs. My God, how 
strong it was, and how weak was mine ! 

Left to myself, I reeled about my bedroom, 
pretending to undress ; then out with my 
candles, and into bed in all my clothes, until 
the cottage should be quiet. Yes, I must lie 
still and feign sleep, with every nerve and fibre 
leaping within me, lest the she-devil below 
should suspect me of suspicions ! It was with 
her I had to cope for the next four-and- 
twenty hours ; and she filled me with a greater 
present terror than all those villains at the 
hall ; for had not their poor little helpless cap- 
tive described her as “ about the worst of the 
gang?” 

To think that my love lay helpless there in 
the hands of those wretches ; and to think that 
her lover lay helpless here in the supervision 
of this vile virago! 

It must have been one or two in the morn- 
ing when I stole to my sitting-room window, 
opened it, and sat down to think steadily, with 
the counterpane about my shoulders. 

The moon sailed high and almost full above 
the clouds ; these were dispersing as the night 
wore on, and such as remained were of a beau- 


140 


My Lady’s Bidding 

tiful soft tint between white and grey. The 
sky was too light for stars, and beneath it the 
open country stretched so clear and far that 
it was as though one looked out at noonday 
through slate-coloured glass. Down the dewy 
slope below my window a few calves fed with 
toothless mouthings ; the beck was very audi- 
ble, the oak-trees less so ; but for these peace- 
ful sounds the stillness and the solitude were 
equally intense. 

I may have sat there like a mouse for half 
an hour. The reason was that I had become 
mercifully engrossed in one of the subsidiary 
problems : whether it would be better to drop 
from the window or to trust to the creaking 
stairs. Would the creaking be much worse 
than the thud, and the difference worth the 
risk of a sprained ankle? Well worth it, I at 
length decided ; the risk was nothing ; my win- 
dow was scarce a dozen feet from the ground. 
How easily it could be done, how quickly, how 
safely in this deep stillness and bright moon- 
light ! I would fall so lightly on my stocking 
soles ; a single soft, dull thud ; then away un- 
der the moon without fear or risk of a false 
step ; away over the stone walls to the main 
road, and so to the nearest police-station with 
141 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


my tale ; and before sunrise the villains would 
be taken in their beds, and my darling would 
be safe ! 

I sprang up softly. Why not do it now? 
Was I bound to keep my rash, blind promise? 
Was it possible these murderers would mur- 
der her? I struck a match on my trousers, 
I lit a candle, I read her letter carefully again, 
and again it maddened and distracted me. I 
struck my hands together. I paced the room 
wildly. Caution deserted me, and I made 
noise enough to wake the very mute ; lost to 
every consideration but that of the terrifying 
day before me, the day of silence and of inac- 
tivity, that I must live through with an un- 
suspecting face, a cool head, a civil tongue! 
The prospect appalled me as nothing else 
could or did ; nay, the sudden noise upon the 
stairs, the knock at my door, and the sense 
that I had betrayed myself already — that even 
now all was over — these came as a relief after 
the haunting terror which they interrupted. 

I flung the door open, and there stood Mrs. 
Braithwaite, as fully dressed as myself. 

“ You’ll not be very well, sir? ” 

“ No, I’m not.” 

“ What’s t’ matter wi’ you ? ” 

142 


My Lady’s Bidding 


This second question was rude and fierce 
with suspicion: the real woman rang out in 
it, yet its effect on me was astonishing: once 
again was I inspired to turn my slip into a 
move. 

“ Matter? ” I cried. “ Can’t you see what’s 
the matter; couldn’t you see when I came in? 
Drink’s the matter! I came in drunk, and 
now I’m mad. I can’t stand it ; I’m not in a fit 
state. Do you know nothing of me? Have 
they told you nothing? I’m the only man 
that was saved from the Lady Jermyn, the ship 
that was burned to the water’s edge with every 
soul but me. My nerves are in little ends. I 
came down here for peace and quiet and sleep. 
Do you know that I have hardly slept for two 
months ? And now I shall never sleep again ! 
O my God, I shall die for want of it! The 
wine has done it. I never should have 
touched a drop. I can’t stand it ; I can’t sleep 
after it ; I shall kill myself if I get no sleep ! 
Do you hear, you woman? I shall kill my- 
self in your house if I don’t get to sleep ! ” 

I saw her shrink, virago as she was. I 

waved my arms, I shrieked in her face. It 

was not all acting. Heaven knows how true 
it was about the sleep. I was slowly dying of 
M3 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


insomnia. I was a nervous wreck. She must 
have heard it. Now she saw it for herself. 

No ; it was by no means all acting. Intend- 
ing only to lie, I found myself telling little 
but the strictest truth, and longing for sleep 
as passionately as though I had nothing to 
keep me awake. And yet, while my heart 
cried aloud in spite of me, and my nerves re- 
lieved themselves in this unpremeditated ebul- 
lition, I was all the time watching its effect 
as tlosely as though no word of it had been 
sincere. 

Mrs. Braithwaite seemed frightened ; not at 
all pitiful; and as I calmed down she recov- 
ered her courage and became insolent. I had 
spoilt her night. She had not been told she 
was to take in a raving lunatic. She would 
speak to Squire Rattray in the morning. 

“ Morning? ” I yelled after her as she went. 
“ Send your husband to the nearest chemist 
as soon as it’s dawn; send him for chloral, 
chloroform, morphia, anything they’ve got 
and as much of it as they’ll let him have. I’ll 
give you five pounds if you get me what’ll 
send me to sleep all to-morrow — and to-mor- 
row night ! ” 

Never, I am sure, were truth and falsehood 


144 


My Lady’s Bidding 

more craftily interwoven ; yet I had thought 
of none of it until the woman was at my door, 
while of much I had not thought at all. It 
had rushed from my heart and from my lips. 
And no sooner was I alone than I burst into 
hysterical tears, only to stop and compliment 
myself because they sounded genuine — as 
though they were not! Towards morning I 
took to my bed in a burning fever, and lay 
there, now congratulating myself upon it, be- 
cause when night came they would all think 
me so secure ; and now weeping because the 
night might find me dying or dead. So I 
tossed, with her note clasped in my hand un- 
derneath the sheets ; and beneath my very 
body the stout weapon that I had bought in 
town. I might not have to use it, but I was 
fatalist enough to fancy that I should. In the 
meantime it helped me to lie still, my thoughts 
fixed on the night, and the day made easy for 
me after all. 

If only I could sleep ! 

About nine o’clock Jane Braithwaite paid 
me a surly visit ; in half an hour she was back 
with tea and toast and an altered mien. She 
lit my fire, and treated me to her original tone 
of strenuous civility with the utmost energy 
M5 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


and determination. Her vagaries soon 
ceased to puzzle me : the psychology of Jane 
Braithwaite was not recondite. In the night 
it had dawned on this one that Rattray had 
found me harmless and was done with me, 
therefore there was no need for her to put her- 
self out any further on my account. In the 
morning, finding me really ill, she had gone to 
the hall in alarm ; her subsequent attentions 
were an act of obedience ; and in their midst 
came Rattray himself to my bedside. 


146 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE LONGEST DAY OF MY LIFE 

The boy looked so blithe and buoyant, so 
gallant and still so frank, that even now I 
could not think as meanly of him as poor Eva 
did. A rogue he must be, but surely not the 
petty rogue that she had made him out. Yet 
it was dirty work that he had done by me ; and 
there I had to lie and take his kind, false, 
felon’s hand in mine. 

“ My poor dear fellow,” he cried, “ I’m most 
sorry to find you like this. But I was afraid 
of it last night. It’s all this infernally strong 
air!” 

How I longed to tell him what it was, and 
to see his face! The thought of Eva alone 
restrained me, and I retorted as before, in a 
tone I strove to make as friendly, that it was 
his admirable wine and nothing else. 

“ But you took hardly any.” 

“ I shouldn’t have touched a drop. I can’t 
stand it. Instead of soothing me it excites 
me to the verge of madness. I’m almost over 
i47 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


the verge — for want of sleep — my trouble ever 
since the trouble.” 

Again I was speaking the literal truth, and 
again congratulating myself as though it were 
a lie: the fellow looked so distressed at my 
state ; indeed I believe that his distress was as 
genuine as mine, and his sentiments as in- 
volved. He took my hand again, and his 
brow wrinkled at its heat. He asked for the 
other hand to feel my pulse. I had to drop 
my letter to comply. 

“I wish to goodness there was something I 
could do for you,” he said. “ Would you — 
would you care to see a doctor? ” 

I shook my head, and could have smiled at 
his visible relief. 

“ Then I’m going to prescribe for you,” he 
said with decision. “ It’s the place that 
doesn’t agree with you, and it was I who 
brought you to the place ; therefore it’s for me 
to get you out of it as quick as possible. Up 
you get, and I’ll drive you to the station my- 
self!” 

I had another work to keep from smiling: 
he was so ingenuously disingenuous. There 
was less to smile at in his really nervous anx- 
iety to get me away. I lay there reading him 
148 


The Longest Day of My Life 

like a book: it was not my health that con- 
cerned him, of course: was it my safety? I 
told him he little knew how ill I was — an in- 
glorious speech that came hard, though not 
by any means untrue. “ Move me with this 
fever on me ? ” said I ; “it would be as much 
as my miserable life is worth.” 

“ I’m afraid,” said he, “ that it may be as 
much as your life’s worth to stay on here ! ” 
And there was such real fear, in his voice and 
eyes, that it reconciled me there and then to 
the discomfort of a big revolver between the 
mattress and the small of my back. “ We 
must get you out of it,” he continued, “ the 
moment you feel fit to stir. Shall we say to- 
morrow ? ” 

“ If you like,” I said advisedly; “ and if I 
can get some sleep to-day.” 

“ Then to-morrow it is! You see I know 
it’s the climate,” he added, jumping from tone 
to tone ; “ it couldn’t have been those two or 
three glasses of sound wine.” 

“ Shall I tell you what it is ? ” I said, looking 
him full in the face, with eyes that I dare say 
were wild enough with fever and insomnia. 
“ It’s the burning of the Lady Jermyn! ” I 
cried. “ It’s the faces and the shrieks of the 


149 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


women; it’s the cursing and the fighting of 
the men ; it’s boat-loads struggling in an oily 
sea; it’s husbands and wives jumping over- 
board together; it’s men turned into devils, 
it’s hell-fire afloat ” 

“ Stop ! stop ! ” he whispered, hoarse as a 
crow. I was sitting up with my hot eyes upon 
him. He was white as the quilt, and the bed 
shook with his trembling. I had gone as far 
as was prudent, and I lay back with a glow of 
secret satisfaction. 

“ Yes, I will stop,” said I, “ and I wouldn’t 
have begun if you hadn’t found it so difficult 
to understand my trouble. Now you know 
what it is. It’s the old trouble. I came up 
here to forget it; instead of that I drink too 
much and tell you all about it ; and the two 
things together have bowled me over. But 
I’ll go to-morrow ; only give me something to 
put me asleep till then.” 

“I will ! ” he vowed. “ I’ll go myself to the 
nearest chemist, and he shall give me the very 
strongest stuff he’s got. Good-by, and don’t 
you stir till I come back — for your own sake. 
I’ll go this minute, and I’ll ride like hell ! ” 
And if ever two men were glad to be rid of 
each other, they were this young villain and 
myself. 

* 5 ° 


The Longest Day of My Life 

But what was his villainy? It was little 
enough that I fyad overheard at the window, and 
still less that poor Eva had told me in her hur- 
ried lines. All I saw clearly was that the Lady 
Jermyn and some hundred souls had perished 
by the foulest of foul play ; that, besides Eva 
and myself, only the incendiaries had es- 
caped ; that somehow these wretches had made 
a second escape from the gig, leaving dead 
men and word of their own death behind them 
in the boat. And here the motive was as 
much a mystery to me as the means ; but, in 
my present state, both were also matters of 
supreme indifference. My one desire was to 
rescue my love from her loathsome captors; 
of little else did I pause to think. Yet Rat- 
tray's visit left its own mark on my mind; 
and long after he was gone I lay puzzling over 
the connection between a young Lancastrian, 
of good name, of ancient property, of great 
personal charm, and a crime of unparalleled 
atrocity committed in cold blood on the high 
seas. That his complicity was flagrant I had 
no room to doubt, after Eva’s own indictment 
of him, uttered to his face and in my hearing. 
Was it then the usual fraud on the underwrit- 
ers, and was Rattray the inevitable accomplice 

151 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


on dry land? I could think of none but the 
conventional motive for destroying a vessel. 
Yet I knew there must be another and a 
subtler one ; to account not only for the mag- 
nitude of the crime, but for the pains which 
the actual perpetrators had taken to conceal 
the fact of their survival ; and for the union of 
so diverse a trinity as Senhor Santos, Captain 
Harris, and the young squire. 

It must have been about mid-day when Rat- 
tray re-appeared, ruddy, spurred, and splashed 
with mud ; a comfort to sick eyes, I declare, in 
spite of all. He brought me two little phials, 
put one on the chimney-piece, poured the 
other into my tumbler, and added a little water. 

“ There, old fellow,” said he ; “ swallow that, 
and if you don’t get some sleep the chemist 
who made it up is the greatest liar unhung.” 

“ What is it ? ” I asked, the glass in my hand, 
and my eyes on those of my companion. 

“ I don’t know,” said he. “ I just told them 
to make up the strongest sleeping-draught 
that was safe, and I mentioned something 
about your case. Toss it off, man; it’s sure 
to be all right.” 

Yes, I could trust him ; he was not that 
sort of villain, for all that Eva Denison had 
152 


The Longest Day of My Life 

said. I liked his face as well as ever. I liked 
his eye, and could have sworn to its honesty as 
I drained the glass. Even had it been other- 
wise, I must have taken my chance or shown 
him all ; as it was, when he had pulled down 
my blind, and shaken my pillow, and he gave 
me his hand once more, I took it with invol- 
untary cordiality. I only grieved that so fine 
a young fellow should have involved himself 
in so villainous a business ; yet for Eva’s sake 
I was glad that he had; for my mind failed 
(rather than refused) to believe him so black 
as she had painted him. 

The long, long afternoon that followed I 
never shall forget. The opiate racked my 
head ; it did not do its work ; and I longed to 
sleep till evening with a longing I have never 
known before or since. Everything seemed 
to depend upon it; I should be a man again, 
if only I could first be a log for a few hours. 
But no ; my troubles never left me for an in- 
stant; and there I must lie, pretending that 
they had ! For the other draught was for the 
night; and if they but thought the first one 
had taken due effect, so much the less would 
they trouble their heads about me when they 
believed that I had swallowed the second. 


i53 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Oh, but it was cruel ! I lay and wept with 
weakness and want of sleep ; ere night fell I 
knew that it would find me useless, if indeed 
my reason lingered on. To lie there helpless 
when Eva was expecting me, that would be 
the finishing touch. I should rise a maniac 
if ever I rose at all. More probably I would 
put one of my five big bullets into my own 
splitting head; it was no small temptation, 
lying there in a double agony, with the loaded 
weapon by my side. 

Then sometimes I thought it was coming; 
and perhaps for an instant I would be tossing 
in my hen-coop; then back once more. And 
I swear that my physical and mental torments, 
here in my bed, would have been incompar- 
ably greater than anything I had endured on 
the sea, but for the saving grace of one sweet 
thought. She lived ! She lived ! And the 
God who had taken care of me, a castaway, 
would surely deliver her also from the hands 
of murderers and thieves. But not through 
me — I lay weak and helpless — and my tears 
ran again and yet again as I felt myself grow- 
ing hourly weaker. 

I remember what a bright fine day it was, 
with the grand open country all smiles be- 
154 


The Longest Day of My Life 

neath a clear, almost frosty sky, once when I 
got up on tip-toe and peeped out. A keen 
wind whistled about the cottage; I felt it on 
my feet as I stood ; but never have I. known a 
more perfect and invigorating autumn day. 
And there I must lie, with the manhood ebb- 
ing out of me, the manhood that I needed 
so for the night ! I crept back into bed. I 
swore that I would sleep. Yet there I lay, 
listening sometimes to that vile woman’s tread 
below ; sometimes to mysterious whispers, 
between whom I neither knew nor cared; 
anon to my watch ticking by my side, to the 
heart beating in my body, hour after hour — 
hour after hour. I prayed as I have seldom 
prayed. I wept as I have never wept. I 
railed and I blasphemed — not with my lips, 
because the woman must think I was asleep — 
but so much the more viciously in my heart. 

Suddenly it turned dark. There were no 
gradations — not even a tropical twilight. One 
minute I saw the sun upon the blind; the 
next — thank God ! Oh, thank God ! No light 
broke any longer through the blind; just a 
faint and narrow glimmer stole between it and 
the casement; and the light that had been 
bright golden was palest silver now. 

1 55 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


It was the moon. I had been in a dream- 
less sleep for hours. 

The joy of that discovery! The transport 
of waking to it, and waking refreshed! The 
swift and sudden miracle that it seemed ! I 
shall never, never forget it, still less the sick- 
ening thrill of fear which was cruelly quick 
to follow upon my joy. The cottage was still 
as the tomb. What if I had slept too long! 

With trembling hand I found my watch. 
Luckily I had wound it in the early morning. 
I now carried it to the window, drew back the 
blind, and held it in the moonlight. It was 
not quite ten o’clock. And yet the cottage 
was so still — so still. 

I stole to the door, opened it by cautious 
degrees, and saw the reflection of a light be- 
low. Still not a sound could I hear, save the 
rapid drawing of my own breath, and the 
startled beating of my own heart. 

I now felt certain that the Braithwaites were 
out, and dressed hastily, making as little noise 
as possible, and still hearing absolutely none 
from below. Then, feeling faint with hunger, 
though a new being after my sleep, I remem- 
bered a packet of sandwiches which I had not 
opened on my journey north. These I trans 

156 


The Longest Day~of My Life 

f erred from my travelling-bag (where they had 
lain forgotten) to my pocket, before drawing 
down the blind, leaving the room on tip-toe, 
and very gently fastening the door behind 
me. On the stairs, too, I trod with the utmost 
caution, feeling the wall with my left hand 
(my right was full), lest by any chance I might 
be mistaken in supposing I had the cottage to 
myself. In spite of my caution there came a 
creak at every step. And to my sudden hor- 
ror I heard a chair move in the kitchen below. 

My heart and I stood still together. But 
my right hand tightened on stout wood, my 
right forefinger trembled against thin steel. 
The sound was not repeated. And at length 
I continued on my way down, my teeth set, 
an excuse on my lips, but determination in 
every fibre of my frame. 

A shadow lay across the kitchen floor ; it was 
that of the deaf mute, as he stood on a chair 
before the fire, supporting himself on the 
chimney-piece with one puny arm, while he 
reached overhead with the other. I stood by 
for an instant, glorying in the thought that he 
could not hear me ; the next, I saw what it was 
he was reaching up for — a bell-mouthed 
blunderbuss — and I knew the little devil for 
the imposter that he was. 

*57 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ You touch it,” said I, “and you’ll drop 
dead on that hearth.” 

He pretended not to hear me, but he heard 
the click of the splendid spring which Messrs. 
Deane and Adams had put into that early re- 
volver of theirs, and he could not have come- 
down much quicker with my bullet in 
spine. 

“ Now then,” I said, “ what the devil do you 
mean by shamming deaf and dumb ? ” 

“ I niver said I was owt o’ t’ sort,” he whim- 
pered, cowering behind the chair in a sullen 
ague. 

“But you^acted it, and I’ve a jolly good 
mind to shoot you dead ! ” (Remember, I was 
so weak myself that I thought my arm would 
break from presenting my five chambers and 
my ten-inch barrel ; otherwise I should be 
sorry to relate how I bullied that mouse of a 
man.) “ I may let you off,” I continued, “ if 
you answer questions. Where’s your wife ? ” 

“ Eh, she’ll be back directly ! ” said Braith- 
waite, with some tact ; but his look was too 
cunning to give the warning weight. 

“ I’ve a bullet to spare for her,” said I cheer- 
fully ; “ now then, where is she ? ” 

“ Gone wi’ the oothers, for owt I knaw.” 

158 


The Longest Day of My Life 

“ And where are the others gone ? ” 

“ Where they alius gaw, ower to t’ say.” 

“ Over to the sea, eh? We’re getting on! 
What takes them there ? ” 

“ That’s more than I can tell you, sir,” said 
Braithwaite, with so much emphasis and so 
little reluctance as to convince me that for 
once at least he had spoken the truth. There 
was even a spice of malice in his tone. I be- 
gan to see possibilities in the little beast. 

“ Well,” I said, “ you’re a nice lot ! I don’t 
know what your game is, and don’t want to. 
I’ve had enough of you without that. I’m 
off to-night.” 

“ Before they get back ? ” asked Braith- 
waite, plainly in doubt about his duty, and 
yet as plainly relieved to learn the extent of 
my intention. 

“Certainly,” said I; “why not? I’m not 
particularly anxious to see your wife again, 
and you may ask Mr. Rattray from me why 
the devil he led me to suppose you were deaf 
and dumb? Or, if you like, you needn’t say 
anything at all about it,” I added, seeing his 
thin jaw fall ; “ tell him I never found you out, 
but just felt well enough to go, and went. 
When do you expect them back ? ” 

J 59 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ It won’t be yet a bit,” said he. 

“ Good ! Now look here. What would 
you say to these ? ” And I showed him a cou- 
ple of sovereigns: I longed to offer him 
twenty, but feared to excite his suspicions. 
“ These are yours if you have a conveyance at 
the end of the lane — the lane we came up the 
night before last — in an hour’s time.” 

His dull eyes glistened; but a tremor took 
him from top to toe, and he shook his head. 

“ I’m ill, man ! ” I cried. “ If I stay here 
I’ll die ! Mr. Rattray knows that, and he 
wanted me to go this morning; he’ll be only 
too thankful to find me gone.” 

This argument appealed to him ; indeed, I 
was proud of it. 

“ But I was to stop an’ look after you,” he 
mumbled ; “ it’ll get me into trooble, it will 
that!” 

I took out three more sovereigns ; not a 
penny higher durst I go. 

“ Will five pounds repay you? No need to 
tell your wife it was five, you know ! I should 
keep four of them all to myself.” 

The cupidity of the little wretch was at last 
overcoming his abject cowardice. I could 
see him making up his miserable mind. And 
160 


The Longest Day of My Life 

I still flatter myself that I took the only safe 
(and really cunning) steps to precipitate the 
process. To offer him more money would 
have been madness; instead, I poured it all 
back into my pocket. 

“ All right ! ” I cried ; “ you’re a greedy, 
cowardly, old idiot, and I’ll just save my 
money.” And out I marched into the moon- 
light, very briskly, towards the lane ; he was 
so quick to follow me that I had no fears of the 
blunderbuss, but quickened my step, and soon 
had him running at my heels. 

“ Stop, stop, sir! You’re that hasty wi’ a 
poor owd man.” So he whimpered as he fol- 
lowed me like the little cur he was. 

“ I’m hanged if I stop,” I answered without 
looking back ; and had him almost in tears be- 
fore I swung round on him so suddenly that 
he yelped with fear. “ What are you bother- 
ing me for?” I blustered. “Do you want 
me to wring your neck ? ” 

“Oh, I’ll go, sir! I’ll go, I’ll go,” he 
moaned. 

“ I’ve a good mind not to let you. I 
wouldn’t if I was fit to walk five miles.” 

“ But I’ll roon ’em, sir! I will that! I’ll 
go as fast as iver I can ! ” 
j6i 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ And have a conveyance at the road-end 
of the lane as near an hour hence as you pos- 
sibly can ? ” 

“ Why, there, sir ! ” he cried, crassly in- 
spired ; “ I could drive you in our own trap in 
half the time.” 

“ Oh, no, you couldn’t ! I — I’m not fit to 
be out at all ; it must be a closed conveyance ; 
but I’ll come to the end of the lane to save 
time, so let him wait there. You needn’t wait 
yourself; here’s a sovereign of your money, 
and I’ll leave the rest in the jug in my bed- 
room. There ! It’s worth your while to 
trust me, I think. As for my luggage, I’ll 
write to Mr. Rattray about that. But I’ll be 
shot if I spend another night on his prop- 
erty.” 

I was rid of him at last ; and there I stood, 
listening to his headlong steps, until they 
stumbled out of earshot down the lane; then 
back to the cottage, at a run myself, and up 
to my room to be no worse than my word. 
The sovereigns plopped into the water and 
rang together at the bottom of the jug. In 
another minute I was hastening through the 
plantation, in my hand the revolver that had 
served me well already, and was still loaded 
and capped in all five chambers. 

162 


CHAPTER XIV 


IN THE GARDEN 

It so happened that I met nobody at all ; but 
I must confess that my luck was better than 
my management. As I came upon the beck, 
a new sound reached me with the swirl. It 
was the jingle of bit and bridle; the beat of 
hoofs came after; and I had barely time to 
fling myself flat, when two horsemen emerged 
from the plantation, riding straight towards 
me in the moonlight. If they continued on 
that course they could not fail to see me as 
they passed along the opposite bank. How- 
ever, to my unspeakable relief, they were 
scarce clear of the trees when they turned their 
horses’ heads, rode them through the water 
a good seventy yards from where I lay, and 
so away at a canter across country towards 
the road. On my hands and knees I had a 
good look at them as they bobbed up and 
down under the moon ; and my fears subsided 
in astonished curiosity. For I have already 
boasted of my eyesight, and I could have 

163 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


sworn that neither Rattray nor any one of his 
guests was of the horsemen ; yet the back and 
shoulders of one of these seemed somehow 
familiar to me. Not that I wasted many mo- 
ments over the coincidence, for I had other 
things to think about as I ran on to the hall. 

I found the rear of the building in darkness 
unrelieved from within ; on the other hand, 
the climbing moon beat so full upon the gar- 
den wall, it was as though a lantern pinned me 
as I crept beneath it. In passing I thought 
I might as well try the gate; but Eva was 
right ; it was locked ; and that made me half 
inclined to distrust my eyes in the matter of 
the two horsemen, for whence could they have 
come, if not from the hall ? In any case I was 
well rid of them. I now followed the wall some 
little distance, and then, to see over it, walked 
backwards until I was all but in the beck ; and 
there, sure enough, shone my darling’s candle, 
close as close against the diamond panes of 
her narrow, lofty window! It brought those 
ready tears back to my foolish, fevered eyes. 
But for sentiment there was no time, and every 
other emotion was either futile or premature. 
So I mastered my full heart, I steeled my 
wretched nerves, and braced my limp muscles 
for the task that lay before them. 

164 


In the Garden 


I had a garden wall to scale, nearly twice 
my own height, and without notch or cranny 
in the ancient, solid masonry. I stood against 
it on my toes, and I touched it with my finger- 
tips as high up as possible. Some four feet 
severed them from the coping that left only 
half a sky above my upturned eyes. 

I do not know whether I have made it plain 
that the house was not surrounded bv four 
walls, but merely filled a breach in one of the 
four, which nipped it (as it were) at either end. 
The back entrance was approachable enough, 
but barred or watched, I might be very sure. 
It is ever the vulnerable points which are most 
securely guarded, and it was my one comfort 
that the difficult way must also be the safe 
way, if only the difficulty could be overcome. 
How to overcome it was the problem. I fol- 
lowed the wall right round to the point at 
which it abutted on the tower that immured 
my love ; the height never varied ; nor could 
my hands or eyes discover a single foot-hole, 
ledge, or other means of mounting to the top. 

Yet my hot head was full of ideas ; and I 
wasted some minutes in trying to lift from its 
hinges a solid, six-barred, outlying gate, that 
my weak arms could hardly stir. More time 
165 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

went in pulling branches from the oak-trees 
about the beck, where the latter ran nearest 
to the moonlit wall. I had an insane dream 
of throwing a long forked branch over the 
coping, and so swarming up hand-over-hand. 
But even to me the impracticability of this 
plan came home at last. And there I stood 
in a breathless lather, much time and strength 
thrown away together; and the candle burn- 
ing down for nothing in that little lofty win- 
dow; and the running water swirling noisily 
over its stones at my back. 

This was the only sound ; the wind had died 
away; the moonlit valley lay as still as the 
dread old house in its midst, but for the splash 
and gurgle of the beck. I fancied this grew 
louder as I paused and listened in my help- 
lessness. All at once — was it the tongue of 
Nature telling me the way, or common gump- 
tion returning at the eleventh hour? I ran 
down to the water’s edge, and could have 
shouted for joy. Great stones lay in equal 
profusion on bed and banks. I lifted one of 
the heaviest in both hands. I staggered with 
it to the wall. I came back for another; for 
some twenty minutes I was so employed ; my 
ultimate reward a fine heap of boulders against 
the wall. 


1 66 


In the Garden 


Then I began to build ; then mounted my 
pile, clawing the wall to keep my balance. My 
fingers were still many inches from the cop- 
ing. I jumped down and gave another ten 
minutes to the back-breaking work of carry- 
ing more boulders from the water to the wall. 
Then I widened my cairn below, so that I 
could stand firmly before springing upon the 
pinnacle with which I completed it. I knew 
well that this would collapse under me if I 
allowed my weight to rest more than an in- 
stant upon it. And so at last it did ; but my 
fingers had clutched the coping in time; had 
grabbed it even as the insecure pyramid 
crumbled and left me dangling. 

Instantly exerting what muscle I had left, 
and the occasion gave me, I succeeded in pull- 
ing myself up until my chin was on a level 
with my hands, when I flung an arm over and 
caught the inner coping. The other arm fol- 
lowed ; then a leg ; and at last I sat astride the 
wall, panting and palpitating, and hardly able 
to credit my own feat. One great difficulty 
had been my huge revolver. I had been ter- 
ribly frightened it might go off, and had finally 
used my cravat to sling it at the back of my 
neck. It had shifted a little, and I was work- 
167 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


ing it round again, preparatory to my drop* 
when I saw the light suddenly taken from the 
window in the tower, and a kerchief waving 
for one instant in its place. So she had been 
waiting and watching for me all these hours ! 
I dropped into the garden in a very ecstasy of 
grief and rapture, to think that I had been so 
long in coming to my love, but that I had 
come at last. And I picked myself Up in a 
very frenzy of fear lest, after all, I should fail 
to spirit her from this horrible place. 

Doubly desolate it looked in the rays of that 
bright October moon. Skulking in the shadow 
of the wall which had so long baffled me, I 
looked across a sharp border of shade upon a 
chaos the more striking for its lingering trim 
design. The long, straight paths were bar- 
nacled with weeds ; the dense, fine hedges, 
once prim and angular, had fattened out of all 
shape or form ; and on the velvet sward of 
other days you might have waded waist high 
in rotten hay. Towards the garden end this 
rank jungle merged into a worse wilderness 
of rhododendrons, the tallest I have ever seen. 
On all this the white moon smiled, and the 
grim house glowered, to the eternal swirl and 
rattle of the beck beyond its walls. 

168 


In the Garden 


Long enough I stood where I had dropped, 
listening with all my being for some other 
sound ; but at last that great studded door 
creaked and shivered on its ancient hinges, 
and I heard voices arguing in the Portuguese 
tongue. It was poor Eva wheedling that 
black rascal Jose. I saw her in the lighted 
porch ; the nigger I saw also, shrugging and 
gesticulating for all the world like his hateful 
master; yet giving in, I felt certain, though I 
could not understand a word that reached me. 

And indeed my little mistress very soon 
sailed calmly out, followed by final warnings 
and expostulations hurled from the step: for 
the black stood watching her as she came 
steadily my way, now raising her head to sniff 
the air, now stooping to pluck up a weed, the 
very picture of a prisoner seeking the open 
air for its own sake solely. ' I had a keen eye 
apiece for them as I cowered closer to the 
wall, revolver in hand. But ere my love was 
very near me (for she would stand long mo- 
ments gazing ever so innocently at the moon), 
her gaoler had held a bottle to the light, and 
had beaten a retreat so sudden and so hasty 
that I expected him back every moment, and 
so durst not stir. Eva saw me, however, and 
169 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


contrived to tell me so without interrupting 
the air that she was humming as she walked. 

“ Follow me,” she sang, “ only keep as you 
are, keep as you are, close to the wall, close to 
the wall.” 

And on she strolled to her own tune, and 
came abreast of me without turning her head ; 
so I crept in the shadow (my ugly weapon 
tucked out of sight), and she sauntered in the 
shine, until we came to the end of the garden, 
where the path turned at right angles, run- 
ning behind the rhododendrons ; once in their 
shelter, she halted and beckoned me, and next 
instant I had her hands in mine. 

“ At last ! ” was all that I could say for many 
a moment, as I stood there gazing into her 
dear eyes, no hero in my heroic hour, but the 
bigger love-sick fool than ever. “ But quick 
— quick — quick ! ” I added, as she brought 
me to my senses by withdrawing her hands. 
“ We’ve no time to lose.” And I looked wild- 
ly from wall to wall, only to find them as bar- 
ren and inaccessible on this side as on the 
other. 

“ We have more time than you think,” were 
Eva’s first words. “ We can do nothing for 
half-an-hour.” 

170 


In the Garden 

“ Why not?” 

“ I’ll tell you in a minute. How did you 
manage to get over ? ” 

“ Brought boulders from the beck, and piled 
'em up till I could reach the top." 

I thought her eyes glistened. 

“What patience ! ” she cried softly. “ We 
must find a simpler way of getting out — and 
I think I have. They're all gone, you know, 
but Jose." 

“ All three?" 

“ The captain has been gone all day." 

Then the other two must have been my 
horsemen, very probably in some disguise; 
and my head swam with the thought of the 
risk that I had run at the very moment when 
I thought myself safest. Well, I would have 
finished them both ! But I did not say so to 
Eva. I did not mention the incident, I was so 
fearful of destroying her confidence in me. 
Apologising, therefore, for my interruption, 
without explaining it, I begged her to let me 
hear her plan. 

It was simple enough. There was no fear 
of the others returning before midnight; the 
chances were that they would be very much 
later; and now it was barely eleven, and Eva 
Hi 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


had promised not to stay out above half-an- 
hour. When it was up Jose would come and 
call her. 

“It is horrid to have to be so cunning!” 
cried little Eva, with an angry shudder ; “ but 
it’s no use thinking of that,” she was quick 
enough to add, “ when you have such dreadful 
men to deal with, such fiends ! And I have 
had all day to prepare, and have suffered till I 
am so desperate I would rather die to-night 
than spend another in that house. No; let 
me finish ! Jose will come round here to look 
for me. But you and 1 will be hiding on the 
other side of these rhododendrons. And when 
we hear him here we’ll make a dash for it 
across the long grass. Once let us get the 
door shut and locked in his face, and he’ll be 
in a trap. It will take him some time to break 
in ; time enough to give us a start ; what’s 
more, when he finds us gone, he’ll do what 
they all used to do when in doubt ! ” 

“ What’s that?” 

“ Say nothing till it’s found out ; then lie for 
their lives ; and it was their lives, poor creat- 
ures on the Zambesi ! ” She was silent a mo- 
ment, her determined little face hard-set upon 
some unforgotten horror. “ Once we get 
172 


In the Garden 


away, I shall be surprised if it's found out till 
morning,” concluded Eva, without a word as 
to what I was to do with her ; neither, indeed, 
had I myself given that question a moment’s 
consideration. 

“ Then let’s make a dash for it now ! ” was 
all I said or thought. 

“ No ; they can’t come yet, and Jose is 
strong and brutal, and I have heard how ill 
you are. That you should have come to me 

notwithstanding ” and she broke off with 

her little hands lying so gratefully on my 
shoulders, that I know not how I refrained 
from catching her then and there to my heart. 
Instead, I laughed and said that my illness was 
a pure and deliberate sham, and my presence 
there its direct result. And such was the virt- 
ue in my beloved’s voice, the magic of her 
eyes, the healing of her touch, that I was 
scarce conscious of deceit, but felt a whole 
man once more as we two stood together in 
the moonlight. 

In a trance I stood there gazing into her 
brave young eyes. In a trance I suffered her 
to lead me by the hand through the rank, 
dense rhododendrons. And still entranced I 
crouched by her side near the further side, 
173 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


with only unkempt grass-plot and a weedy 
path between us and that ponderous door, 
wide open still, and replaced by a section of 
the lighted hall within. On this we fixed our 
attention with mingled dread and impatience, 
those contending elements of suspense ; but 
the black was slow to reappear ; and my eyes 
stole home to my sweet girl’s face, with its 
glory of moonlit curls, and the eager, resolute, 
embittered look that put the world back two 
whole months, and Eva Denison upon the 
Lady Jermyn’s poop, in the ship’s last hours. 
But it was not her look alone ; she had on her 
cloak, as the night before, but with me (God 
bless her !) she found no need to clasp herself 
in its folds ; and underneath she wore the very 
dress in which she had sung at our last con- 
cert, and been rescued in the gig. It looked 
as though she had worn it ever since. The 
roses were crushed and soiled, the tulle all 
torn, and tarnished some strings of beads that 
had been gold : a tatter of Chantilly lace hung 
by a thread : it is another of the relics that I 
leave unearthed in the writing of this nar- 
rative. 

“ I thought men never noticed dresses ? ” 
my love said suddenly, a pleased light in her 
i74 


In the Garden 


eyes (I thought) in spite of all. “ Do you 
really remember it? ” 

“ I remember every one of them,” I said in- 
dignantly ; and so I did. 

“ You will wonder why I wear it,” said Eva, 
quickly. “ It was the first that came that ter- 
rible night. They have given me many since. 
But I won’t wear one of them — not one ! ” 

How her eyes flashed! I forgot all about 
Jose. 

“ I suppose you know why they hadn’t 
room for you in the gig? ” she went on. 

“ No, I don’t know, and I don’t care. They 
had room for you” said I ; “ that’s all I care 
about.” And to think she could not see I 
loved her! 

“ But do you mean to say you don’t know 
that these — murderers — set fire to the ship ? ” 

“ No — yes ! I heard you say so last night.” 

“ And you don’t want to know what for? ” 

Out of politeness I protested that I did ; but, 
as I live, all I wanted to know just then was 
whether my love loved me — whether she ever 
could — whether such happiness was possible 
under heaven ! 

“ You remember all that mystery about the 
cargo ? ” she continued eagerly, her pretty 
lips so divinely parted ! 

i75 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ It turned out to be gunpowder/’ said I, 
still thinking only of her. 

“ No— gold!” 

“ But it was gunpowder,” I insisted ; for it 
was my incorrigible passion for accuracy 
which had led up to half our arguments on the 
voyage ; but this time Eva let me off. 

“ It was also gold : twelve thousand ounces 
from the diggings. That was the real mystery. 
Do you mean to say you never guessed ? ” 

“ No, by Jove I didn’t! ” said I. She had 
diverted my interest at last. I asked her if 
she had known on board. 

“ Not until the last moment. I found out 
during the fire. Do you remember when we 
said good-bye ? I was nearly telling you 
then.” 

Did I remember! The very letter of that 
last interview was cut deep in my heart ; not 
a sleepless night had I passed without re- 
hearsing it word for word and look for look ; 
and sometimes, when sorrow had spent itself, 
and the heart could bleed no more, vain grief 
had given place to vainer speculation, and I 
had cudgelled my wakeful brains for the mean- 
ing of the new and subtle horror which I had 
read in my darling’s eyes at the last. Now I 
176 


In the Garden 


understood ; and the one explanation brought 
such a tribe in its train, that even the perilous 
ecstasy of the present moment was tempo- 
rarily forgotten in the horrible past. 

“ Now I know why they wouldn’t have me 
in the gig ! ” I cried softly. 

“ She carried four heavy men’s weight in 
gold.” 

“ When on earth did they get it aboard ? ” 

“ In provision boxes at the last ; but they 
had been filling the boxes for weeks.” 

“ Why, I saw them doing it ! ” I cried. 
“ But what about the gig? Who picked you 
up?” 

She was watching that open door once 
more, and she answered with notable indiffer- 
ence, “ Mr. Rattray.” 

“ So that’s the connection ! ” said I ; and I 
think its very simplicity was what surprised 
me most. 

“ Yes ; he was waiting for us at Ascension.” 

“ Then it was all arranged ? ” 

“ Every detail.” 

“ And this young blackguard is as bad as 
any of them ! ” 

“ Worse,” said she, with bitter brevity. 
Nor had I ever seen her look so hard but once, 
177 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


and that was the night before in the old justice 
hall, when she told Rattray her opinion of him 
to his face. She had now the same angry 
flush, the same set mouth and scornful voice ; 
and I took it finally into my head that she was 
unjust to the poor devil, villain though he was. 
With all his villainy I declined to believe him 
as bad as the others. I told her so in as many 
words. And in a moment we were arguing 
as though we were back on the Lady Jermyn 
with nothing else to do. 

“ You may admire wholesale murderers and 
thieves,” said Eva. “ I do not.” 

“ Nor I. My point is simply that this one 
is not as bad as the rest. I believe he was 
really glad for my sake when he discovered 
that I knew nothing of the villainy. Come 
now, has he ever offered you any personal vio- 
lence?” 

“Me? Mr. Rattray? I should hope not, 
indeed ! ” 

“ Has he never saved you from any ? ” 

“ I— I don’t know.” 

“ Then I do. When you left them last 
night there was some talk of bringing you 
back by force. You can guess who suggested 
that — and who set his face against it and got 
178 


In the Garden 


his way. You would think the better of Rat- 
tray had you heard what passed.” 

“ Should I ? ” she asked half eagerly, as she 
looked quickly round at me ; and suddenly I 
saw her eyes fill. “ Oh, why will you speak 
about him ? ” she burst out. “ Why must you 
defend him, unless it’s to go against me, as 
you always did and always will ! I never 
knew anybody like you — never! I want you 
to* take me away from these wretches, and all 
you do is to defend them ! ” 

“ Not all,” said I, clasping her hand 
warmly in mine. “ Not all — not all ! I will 
take you away from them, never fear; in an- 
other hour God grant you may be out of their 
reach for ever ! ” 

“ But where are we to go ? ” she whispered 
wildly. “ What are you to do with me ? All 
my friends think me dead, and if they knew I 
was not it would all come out.” 

“ So it shall,” said I ; “ the sooner the bet- 
ter ; if I’d had my way it would all be out al- 
ready.” 

I see her yet, my passionate darling, as she 
turned upon me, whiter than the full white 
moon. 

“ Mr. Cole,” said she, “ you must give me 
i79 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


your sacred promise that so far as you are con- 
cerned, it shall never come out at all ! ” 

“ This monstrous conspiracy ? This cold- 
blooded massacre ? ” 

And I crouched aghast. 

“Yes; it could do no good; and, at any 
rate, unless you promise I remain where I 
am.” 

“ In their hands?” 

“ Decidedly — to warn them in time. Leave 
them I would, but betray them — never! ” 
What could I say? What choice had I in 
the face of an alternative so headstrong and so 
unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these 
miscreants I would have let every malefactor 
in the country go unscathed : yet the condition 
was a hard one : and, as I hesitated, my love 
went on her knees to me, there in the moon- 
light among the rhododendrons. 

“ Promise — promise — or you will kill me ! ” 
she gasped. “ They may deserve it richly, 
but I would rather be torn in little pieces than 
— than have them — hanged ! ” 

“ It is too good for most of them.” 

“ Promise ! ” 

“ To hold my tongue about them all? ” 

“ Yes — promise ! ” 

180 


In the Garden 


“ But, Eva ” 

“ Promise ! ” 

“ When a hundred lives were sacrificed ” 

“ Promise !” 

“ I can’t,” I said. “ It’s wrong.” 

“ Then good-bye ! ” she cried, starting to 
her feet. 

“ No — no — ” and I caught her hand. 

“ Well, then?” 

“ I promise.” 


CHAPTER XV 


FIRST BLOOD 

So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for 
Eva’s sake, to save her from these wretches, 
or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did 
it strike me as very strange, after a moment’s 
reflection, that she should intercede thus ear- 
nestly for a band headed by her own mother’s 
widower, prime scoundrel of them all though 
she knew him to be. The only surprise was 
that she had not interceded in his name ; that 
I should have forgotten, and she should have 
allowed me to forget, the very existence of so 
inexorable a claim upon her loyalty. This, 
however, made it a little difficult to understand 
the hysterical gratitude with which my unwill- 
ing promise was received. Poor darling ! she 
was beside herself with sheer relief. She wept 
as I had never seen her weep before. She 
seized and even kissed my hands, as one who 
neither knew nor cared what she did, surpris- 
ing me so much by her emotion that this ex- 
pression of it passed unheeded. I was the best 
182 


First Blood 


friend she had ever had. I was her one good 
friend in all the world ; she would trust herself 
to me ; and if I would but take her to the con- 
vent where She had been brought up, she would 
pray for me there until her death, but that 
would not be very long. 

All of which confused me utterly ; it seemed 
an inexplicable breakdown in one who had 
shown such nerve and courage hitherto, and so 
hearty a loathing for that damnable Santos. So 
completely had her presence of mind forsaken 
her that she looked no longer where she had 
been gazing hitherto. And thus it was that 
neither of us saw Jose until we heard him call- 
ing, “ Senhora Evah ! Senhora Evah ! ” with 
some rapid sentences in Portuguese. 

“ Now is our time,” I whispered, crouching 
lower and clasping a small hand gone suddenly 
cold. “ Think of nothing now but getting out 
of this. I’ll keep my word once we are out; 
and here's the toy that’s going to get us out.” 
And I produced my Deane-and-Adams with 
no small relish. 

A little trustful pressure was my answer and 
my reward ; meanwhile the black was singing 
out lustily in evident suspicion and alarm. 

“ He says they are coming back,” whispered 
Eva ; “ but that’s impossible.” 

183 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“Why?” 

“ Because if they were he cojildn’t see them, 
and if he heard them he would be frightened 
of their hearing him. But here he comes ! ” 

A shuffling quick step on the path ; a run- 
ning grumble of unmistakable threats ; a 
shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses 
through the leaves, very near us for an instant,, 
then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed 
within a few yards of our hiding-place. A di- 
minuendo of the shuffling steps ; then a curs- 
ing, frightened savage at one end of the 
rhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the 
other, hand in hand, and bent quite double, 
into the long neglected grass. 

“ Can you run for it ? ” I whispered. 

“ Yes, but not too fast, for fear we trip.” 

“ Come on, then ! ” 

The lighted open doorway grew greater at 
every stride. 

“ He hasn’t seen us yet ” 

“ No, I hear him threatening me still.” 

“ Now he has, though ! ” 

A wild whoop proclaimed the fact, and up- 
right we tore at top speed through the last ten 
yards of grass, while the black rushed down 
one of the side-paths, gaining audibly on us 
184 


First Blood 


over the better ground. But our start had 
saved us, and we flew up the steps as his feet 
ceased to clatter on the path ; he had plunged 
into the grass to cut off the corner. 

“ Thank God ! ” cried Eva. “ Now shut it 
quick.” 

The great door swung home with a mighty 
clatter, and Eva seized the key in both hands. 

“ I can’t turn it ! ” 

To lose a second was to take a life, and un- 
consciously I was sticking at that, perhaps 
from no higher instinct than distrust of my aim. 
Our pursuer, however, was on the steps when 
I clapped my free hand on top of those little 
white straining ones, and by a timely effort 
bent both them and the key round together ; 
the ward shot home as Jose hurled himself 
against the door. Eva bolted it. But the thud 
was not repeated, and I gathered myself to- 
gether between the door and the nearest win- 
dow, for by now I saw there was but one thing 
for us. The nigger must be disabled, if I could 
manage such a nicety; if not, the devil take 
his own. 

Well, I was not one tick too soon for him. 
My pistol was not cocked uefore the crash came 
that I was counting on, and with it a shower 
i8 5 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


of small glass driving across the six-foot sill 
and tinkling on the flags. Next came a black 
and bloody face, at which I could not fire. I 
had to wait till I saw his legs, when I promptly 
shattered one of them at disgracefully short 
range. The report was as deafening as one 
upon the stage; the hall filled with white 
smoke, and remained hideous with the bellow- 
ing of my victim. I searched him without a 
qualm, but threats of annihilation instead, and 
found him unarmed but for that very knife 
which Rattray had induced me to hand over to 
him in town. I had a grim satisfaction in de- 
priving him of this, and but small compunc- 
tion in turning my back upon his pain. 

“ Come, ,, I said to poor Eva, “ don’t pity 
him, though I daresay he’s the most pitiable of 
the lot; show me the way through, and I’ll 
follow with this lamp.” 

One was burning on the old oak table, I car- 
ried it along a narrow passage, through a great 
low kitchen where I bumped my head against 
the black oak beams ; and I held it on high at 
a door almost as massive as the one which we 
had succeeded in shutting in the nigger’s face. 

“ I was afraid of it ! ” cried Eva, with a sud- 
den sob. 

1 86 


First Blood 


“What is it?” 

“ They’ve taken away the key ! ” 

Yes, the keen air came through an empty 
key-hole; and my lamp, held close, not only 
showed us that the door was locked, but that 
the lock was one with which an unskilled hand 
might tamper for hours without result. I dealt 
it a hearty kick by way of a test. The heavy 
timber did not budge ; there was no play at all 
at either lock or hinges ; nor did I see how I 
could spend one of my four remaining bullets 
upon it, with any chance of a return. 

“ Is this the only other door ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then it must be a window.” 

“ All the back ones are barred.” 

“ Securely ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then we’ve no choice in the matter.” 

And I led the way back to the hall, where 
the poor black devil lay blubbering in his blood. 
In the kitchen I found the bottle of wine (Rat- 
tray’s best port, that they were trying to make 
her take for her health) with which Eva had 
bribed him, and I gave it to him before laying 
hands on a couple of chairs. 

“ What are you going to do ? ” 

187 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Go out the way we came.” 

“ But the wall?” 

“ Pile up these chairs, and as many more as 
we may need, if we can't open the gate.” 

But Eva was not paying attention any longer, 
either to me or to Jose; his white teeth were 
showing in a grin for all his pain; her eyes 
were fixed in horror on the floor. 

“ They've come back,” she gasped. “ The 
underground passage ! Hark — hark ! ” 

There was a muffled rush of feet beneath our 
own, then a dull but very distinguishable clat- 
ter on some invisible stair. 

“ Underground passage ! ” I exclaimed, and 
in my sheer disgust I forgot what was due to 
my darling. “ Why on earth didn’t you tell 
me of it before ? ” 

“ There was so much to tell you ! It leads to 
the sea. Oh, what shall we do? You must 
hide — upstairs — anywhere ! ” cried Eva, wild- 
ly. “ Leave them to me — leave them to me.” 

“ I like that,” said I ; and I did ; but I de- 
tested myself for the tears my words had drawn, 
and I prepared to die for them. 

“ They’ll kill you, Mr. Cole ! ” 

“ It would serve me right ; but we'll see 
about it.” 

1 88 


First Blood 


And I stood with my revolver very ready in 
my right hand, while with the other I caught 
poor Eva to my side, even as a door flew open, 
and Rattray himself burst upon us, a lantern 
in his hand, and the perspiration shining on his 
handsome face in its light. 

I can see him now as he stood dumfounded 
on the threshold of the hall; and yet, at the 
time, my eyes sped past him into the room be- 
yond. 

It was the one I have described as being 
lined with books ; there was a long rent in this 
lining, where the books had opened with a 
door, through which Captain Harris, Joaquin 
Santos, and Jane Braithwaite followed Rattray 
in quick succession, the men all with lanterns, 
the woman scarlet and dishevelled even for her. 
It was over the squire’s shoulders I saw their 
faces ; he kept them from passing him in the 
doorway by a free use of his elbows ; and when 
I looked at him again, "his black eyes were blaz- 
ing from a face white with passion, and they 
were fixed upon me. 

“ What the devil brings you here ? ” he 
thundered at last. 

“ Don’t ask idle questions,” was my reply to 
that. 


189 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ So you were shamming to-day ! ” 

“ I was taking a leaf out of your book.” 
“You’ll gain nothing by being clever ! ” 
sneered the squire, taking a threatening step 
forward. For at the last moment I had tucked 
my revolver behind my back, not only for the 
pleasure, but for the obvious advantage of get- 
ting them all in front of me and off their guard. 
I had no idea that such eyes as Rattray’s could 
be so fierce: they were dancing from me 
to my companion, whom their glitter fright- 
ened into an attempt to disengage herself from 
me; but my arm only tightened about her 
drooping figure. 

“ I shall gain no more than I expect,” said I, 
carelessly. “ And I know what to expect from 
brave gentlemen like you! It will be better 
than your own fate, at all events; anything’s 
better than being taken hence to the place of 
execution, and hanged by the neck until you’re 
dead, all three of you in a row, and your bodies 
buried within the precincts of the prison ! ” 

“ The very thing for him,” murmured San- 
tos. “ The very thing ! ” 

“ But I’m so soft-hearted,” I went insanely 
on, “ that I should be sorry to see that happen 
to such fine fellows as you are. Come out of 
190 


First Blood 


that, you little fraud behind there ! ” It was 
my betrayer skulking in the room. “ Come 
out and line up with the rest! No, I’m not 
going to see you fellows dance on nothing; 
I’ve another kind of ball apiece for you, and 
one between ’em for the Braithwaites ! ” 

Well, I suppose I always had a nasty tongue 
in me, and rather enjoyed making play with it 
on provocation ; but, if so, I met with my de- 
serts that night. For the nigger of the Lady 
Jermyn lay all but hid behind Eva and me ; if 
they saw him at all, they may have thought him 
drunk ; but, as for myself, I had fairly forgot- 
ten his existence until the very moment came 
for showing my revolver, when it was twisted 
out of my grasp instead, and a ball sang under 
my arm as the brute fell back exhausted and 
the weapon clattered beside him. Before I 
could stoop for it there was a dead weight on 
my left arm, and Squire Rattray was over the 
table at a bound, with his arms jostling mine 
beneath Eva Denison’s senseless form. 

“ Leave her to me,” he cried fiercely. “ You 
fool,” he added in a lower key, “ do you think 
I’d let any harm come to her? ” 

I looked him in the bright and honest eyes 
that had made me trust him in the beginning. 

191 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


And I did not utterly distrust him yet. Rather 
was the guile on my side as I drew back and 
watched Rattray lift the young girl tenderly, 
and slowly carry her to the door by which she 
had entered and left the hall just twenty-four 
hours before. I could not take my eyes off 
them till they were gone. And when I looked 
for my revolver, it also had disappeared. 

Jose had not got it — he lay insensible. San- 
tos was whispering to Harris. Neither of 
them seemed armed. I made sure that Rattray 
had picked it up and carried it off with Eva. 
I looked wildly for some other weapon. Two 
unarmed men and a woman were all I had to 
deal with, for Braithwaite had long since van- 
ished. Could I but knock the worthless life 
out of the men, I should have but the squire 
and his servants to deal with; and in that 
quarter I still had my hopes of a bloodless bat- 
tle and a treaty of war. 

A log fire was smouldering in the open grate. 
I darted to it, and had a heavy, half-burnt brand 
whirling round my head next instant. Harris 
was the first within my reach. He came game- 
ly at me with his fists. I sprang upon him, and 
struck him to the ground with one blow, the 
sparks flying far and wide as my smoking 
192 


First Blood 


brand met the seaman’s skull. Santos was 
upon me next instant, and him, by sheer luck, 
I managed to serve the same; but I doubt 
whether either man was stunned; and I was 
standing ready for them to rise, when I felt my- 
self seized round the neck from behind, and a 
mass of fluffy hair tickling my cheek, while a 
shrill voice set up a lusty scream for the squire. 

I have said that the woman Braithwaite was 
of a sinister strength ; but I had little dreamt 
how strong she really was. First it was her arms 
that wound themselves about my neck, long, 
sinuous, and supple as the tentacles of some 
vile monster ; then, as I struggled, her thumbs 
were on my windpipe like pads of steel. Tight- 
er she pressed, and tighter yet. My eyeballs 
started ; my tongue lolled ; I heard my brand 
drop, and through a mist I saw it picked up 
instantly. It crashed upon my skull as I still 
struggled vainly ; again and again it came 
down mercilessly in the same place; until I 
felt as though a sponge of warm water had 
been squeezed over my head, and saw a hun- 
dred withered masks grinning sudden exulta- 
tion into mine : but still the lean arm whirled, 
and the splinters flew, till I was blind with my 
blood and the seven senses were beaten out of 


me. 


i93 


CHAPTER XVI 


A DEADLOCK 

It must have been midnight when I opened 
my eyes: a clock was striking as though it 
never would stop. My mouth seemed fire ; a 
pungent flavour filled my nostrils ; the wine- 
glass felt cold against my teeth. “ That’s more 
like it ! ” muttered a voice close to my ear. An 
arm was withdrawn from under my shoulders. 
I was allowed to sink back upon some pillows. 
And now I saw where I was. The room was 
large and poorly lighted. I lay in my clothes 
on an old four-poster bed. And my enemies 
were standing over me in a group. 

“ I hope you are satisfied ! ” sneered Joaquin 
Santos, with a flourish of his eternal cigarette. 

“ I am. You don’t do murder in my house, 
wherever else you may do it.” 

“ And now better lid ’im to the nirrest poliss- 
station ; or weel you go and tell the poliss your- 
self ? ” asked the Portuguese, in the same tone 
of withering irony. 


194 


A Deadlock 


“ Ay, ay,” growled Harris ; “ that’s the next 
thing ! ” 

“ No,” said Rattray ; “ the next thing’s for 
you two to leave him to me.” 

“ We’ll see you damned ! ” cried the captain. 

“ No, no, my friend,” said Santos, with a 
shrug ; “ let him have his way. He is as fond 
of his skeen as you are of yours; he’ll come 
round to our way in the end. I know this Sen- 
hor Cole. It is necessary for ’im to die. But it 
is not necessary this moment ; let us live them 
together for a leetle beet.” 

“ That’s all I ask ! ” cried Rattray eagerly. 

“ You won’t ask it twice,” rejoined Santos, 
shrugging. “ I know this Senhor Cole. There 
is only one way of dilling with a man like that. 
Besides, he ’as ’alf-keeled my good Jose; it is 
necessary for ’im to die.” 

“ I agree with the senior,” said Harris, whose 
forehead was starred with sticking-plaster. 
“ It’s him or us, an’ we’re all agen you, squire. 
You’ll have to give in, first or last.” 

And the pair were gone; their steps grew 
faint in the corridor ; when we could no longer 
hear them, Rattray closed the door and quietly 
locked it. Then he turned to me, stern enough, 
and pointed to the door with a hand that shook. 
i95 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

“ You see how it is? ” 

“ Perfectly.” 

" They want to kill you ! ” 

“ Of course they do.” 

“ It’s your own fault ; you’ve run yourself 
into this. I did my best to keep you out of it. 
But in you come, and spill first blood.” 

“ I don’t regret it,” said I. 

“ Oh, you’re damned mule enough not to re- 
gret anything ! ” cried Rattray. “ I see the sort 
you are; yet but for me, I tell you plainly, 
you’d be a dead man now.’” 

“ I can’t think why you interfered.” 

“ You’ve heard the reason. I won’t have 
murder done here if I can prevent it ; so far I 
have; it rests with you whether I can go on 
preventing it or not.” 

“ With me, does it? ” 

He sat down on the side of the bed. He 
threw an arm to the far side of my body, and 
he leant over me with savage eyes now staring 
into mine, now resting with a momentary 
gleam of pride upon my battered head. I put 
up my hand ; it lit upon a very turban of band- 
ages, and at that I tried to take his hand in 
mine. He shook it off, and his eyes met mine 
more fiercely than before. 

196 . 


A Deadlock 


" See here, Cole,” said he : “I don’t know 
how the devil you got wind of anything to start 
with, and I don’t care. What I do know is that 
you’ve made bad enough a long chalk worse 
for all concerned, and you’ll have to get your- 
self out of the mess you’ve got yourself into, 
and there’s only one way. I suppose Miss 
Denison has really told you everything this 
time? What’s that? Oh, yes, she’s all right 
again ; no thanks to you. Now let’s hear what 
she did tell you. It’ll save time.” 

I repeated the hurried disclosures made by 
Eva in the rhododendrons. He nodded grimly 
in confirmation of their truth. 

“ Yes, those are the rough facts. The game 
was started in Melbourne. My part was to 
wait at Ascension till the Lady Jcrmyn signalled 
herself, follow her in a schooner we had bought, 
and pick up the gig with the gold aboard. Well, 
I did so ; never mind the details now, and never 
mind the bloody massacre the others had made 
of it before I came up. God knows I was never 
a consenting party to that, though I know I’m 
responsible. I’m in this thing as deep as any 
of them. I’ve shared the risks and I’m going 
to share the plunder, and I’ll swing with the 
others if it ever comes to that. I deserve it 
197 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


hard enough. And so here we are, we three 
and the nigger, all four fit to swing in a row, 
as you were fool enough to tell us ; and you 
step in and find out everything. What’s to be 
done? You know what the others want to do. 
I say it rests with you whether they do it or not. 
There’s only one other way of meeting the 
case.” 

“ What’s that?” 

“ Be in it yourself, man ! Come in with me 
and split my share ! ” 

I could have burst out laughing in his hand- 
some eager face ; the good faith of this absurd 
proposal was so incongruously apparent ; and 
so obviously genuine was the young villain’s 
anxiety for my consent. Become accessory 
after the fact in such a crime ! Sell my silence 
for a price ! I concealed my feelings with equal 
difficulty and resolution. I had plans of my 
own already, but I must gain time to think 
them over. Nor could I afford to quarrel with 
Rattray meanwhile. 

“ What was the haul ? ” I asked him, with 
the air of one not unprepared to consider the 
matter. 

“ Twelve thousand ounces ! ” 

“ Forty-eight thousand pounds, about ? ” 

198 


A Deadlock 


“ Yes — yes.” 

“ And your share ? ” 

“ Fourteen thousand pounds. Santos takes 
twenty, and Harris and I fourteen thousand 
each.” 

“ And you offer me seven ? ” 

“Ido! I do ! ” 

He was becoming more and more eager and 
excited. His eyes were brighter than I had 
ever seen them, but slightly bloodshot, and a 
coppery flush tinged his clear, sunburnt skin. 
I fancied he had been making somewhat free 
with the brandy. But loss of blood had cooled 
my brain ; and, perhaps, natural perversity had 
also a share in the composure which grew upon 
me as it deserted my companion. 

“ Why make such a sacrifice ? ” said I, smil- 
ing. “ Why not let them do as they like ? ” 

“ I’ve told you why ! ” he cried impatiently. 
“ I’m not so bad as all that. I draw the line at 
bloody murder! Not a life should have been 
lost if I’d had my way. Besides, I’ve done all 
the dirty work by you, Cole; there’s been no 
help for it. We didn’t know whether you knew 
or not ; it made all the difference to us ; and 
somebody had to dog you and find out how 
much you did know. I was the only one who 
199 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


could possibly do it. God knows how I de- 
tested the job ! I’m more ashamed of it than 
of worse things. I had to worm myself into 
your friendship; and, by Jove, you made me 
think you did know, but hadn’t let it out, and 
might any day. So then I got you up here, 
where you would be in our power if it was so ; 
surely you can see every move ? But this much 
I’ll swear — I had nothing to do with Jose 
breaking into your room at the hotel; they 
went behind me there, curse them ! And when 
at last I found out for certain, down here, that 
you knew nothing after all, I was never more 
sincerely thankful in my life. I give you my 
word it took a load off my heart.” 

“ I know that,” I said. “ I also know who 
broke into my room, and I’m glad I’m even 
with one of you.” 

“ It’s done you no good,” said Rattray. 
“ Their first thought was to put you out of the 
way, and it’s more than ever their last. You 
see the sort of men you’ve got to deal with; 
and they’re three to one, counting the nigger ; 
but if you go in with me they’ll only be three 
to two.” 

He was manifestly anxious to save me in this 
fashion. And I suppose that most sensible 


200 


A Deadlock 


men, in my dilemma, would at least have nursed 
or played upon goodwill so lucky and so en- 
during. But there was always a twist in me, 
that made me love (in my youth) to take the 
unexpected course ; and it amused me the 
more to lead my young friend on. 

“ And where have you got this gold ? ” I 
asked him, in a low voice so promising that he 
instantly lowered his, and his eyes twinkled 
naughtily into mine. 

“ In the old tunnel that runs from this place 
nearly to the sea/’ said he. “We Rattrays have 
always been a pretty warm lot, Cole, and in the 
old days we were the most festive smugglers on 
the coast ; this tunnel’s a relic of ’em, although 
it was only a tradition till I came into the prop- 
erty. I swore I’d find it, and when I’d done so 
I made the new connection which you shall see. 
I’m rather proud of it. And I won’t say I 
haven’t used the old drain once or twice after 
the fashion of my rude forefathers ; but never 
was it such a godsend as it’s been this time. 
By Jove, it would be a sin if you didn’t come 
in with us, Cole ; but for the lives these black- 
guards lost the thing’s gone splendidly; it 
would be a sin if you went and lost yours, 
whereas, if you come in, the two of us would be 


201 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


able to shake off those devils : we should be too 
strong for ’em.” 

“ Seven thousand pounds ! ” I murmured. 
“ Forty-eight thousand between us ! ” 

“ Yes, and nearly all of it down below, at 
this end of the tunnel, and the rest where we 
dropped it when we heard you were trying to 
bolt. We’d got it all at the other end, ready to 
pop aboard the schooner that’s lying there still, 
if you turned out to know anything and to have 
told what you knew to the police. There was 
always the possibility of that, you see ; we sim- 
ply daren’t show our noses at the bank until 
we knew how much you knew, and what you’d 
done or were thinking of doing. As it is, we 
can take ’em the whole twelve thousand ounces, 
or rather I can, as soon as I like, in broad day- 
light. I’m a lucky digger. It’s all right. 
Everybody knows I’ve been out there. They’ll 
have to pay me over the counter; and if you 
wait in the cab, by the Lord Harry, I’ll pay you 
your seven thousand first! You don’t deserve 
it, Cole, but you shall have it, and between us 
we’ll see the others to blazes ! ” 

He jumped up all excitement, and was at the 
door next instant. 

“ Stop,” I cried. “ Where are you going? ” 


202 


A Deadlock 


“ Downstairs to tell them/’ 

“ Tell them what ? ” 

“ That you’re going in with me, and it’s all 
right.” 

“ And do you really think I am ? ” 

He had unlocked the door ; after a pause I 
heard him lock it again. But I did not see his 
face until he returned to the bedside. And then 
it frightened me. It was distorted and dis- 
coloured with rage and chagrin. 

'‘You’ve been making a fool of me!” he 
cried fiercely. 

“ No, I have been considering the matter, 
Rattray.” 

“ And you won’t accept my offer? ” 

“ Of course I won’t. I didn’t say I’d been 
considering that.” 

He stood over me with clenched fists and 
starting eyes. 

“ Don’t you see that I want to save your 
life ? ” he cried. “ Don’t you see that this is the 
only way ? Do you suppose a murder more or 
less makes any difference to that lot down- 
stairs? Are you really such a fool as to die 
rather than hold your tongue ? ” 

“ I won’t hold it for money, at all events,” 
said I. “ But that’s what I was coming to.” 

203 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Very well ! ” he interrupted. “ You shall 
only pretend to touch it. All I want is to con- 
vince the others that it’s against your interest 
to split. Self-interest is the one motive they 
understand. Your bare word would be good 
enough for me.” 

“ Suppose I won’t give my bare word ? ” said 
I, in a gentle manner which I did not mean to 
be as irritating as it doubtless was. Yet his 
proposals and his assumptions were between 
them making me irritable in my turn. 

“ For heaven’s sake don’t be such an idiot, 
Cole ! ” he burst out in a passion. “ You know 
I’m against the others, and you know what 
they want, yet you do your best to put me on 
their side! You know what they are, and yet 
you hesitate ! For the love of God be sensible ; 
at least give me your word that you’ll hold 
your tongue for ever about all you know.” 

“ All right,” I said. “ I’ll give you my word 
— my sacred promise, Rattray — on one condi- 
tion.” 

“ What’s that?” 

“ That you let me take Miss Denison away 
from you, for good and all ! ” 

His face was transformed with fury : honest 
passion faded from it and left it bloodless, dead- 
ly, sinister. 


204 


A Deadlock 


“ Away from me ? ” said Rattray, through 
his teeth. 

“ From the lot of you.” 

“ I remember ! You told me that night. Ha, 
ha, ha ! You were in love with her — you — 
you ! ” 

“ That has nothing to do with it,” said I, 
shaking the bed with my anger and my agita- 
tion. 

“ I should hope not ! You , indeed, to look at 
her ! ” 

“ Well,” I cried, “she may never love me; 
but at least she doesn’t loathe me as she loathes 
you — yes, and the sight of you, and your very 
name ! ” 

So I drew blood for blood ; and for an instant 
I thought he was going to make an end of it by 
incontinently killing me himself. His fists flew 
out. Had I been a whole man on my legs, he 
took care to tell me what he would have done, 
and to drive it home with a mouthful of the 
oaths which were conspicuously absent from 
his ordinary talk. 

“ You take advantage of your weakness, like 
any cur, ,r he wound up. 

“ And you of your strength — like any 
bully ! ” I retorted. 


205 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ You do your best to make me one,” he an- 
swered bitterly. “ I try to stand by you at all 
costs. I want to make amends to you, I want 
to prevent a crime. Yet there you lie and set 
your face against a compromise ; and there you 
lie and taunt me with the thing that’s gall and 
wormwood to me already. I know I gave you 
provocation. And 'I know I’m rightly served. 
Why do you suppose I went into this accursed 
thing at all ? Not for the gold, my boy, but for 
the girl! So she won’t look at me. And it 
serves me right. But — I say — do you really 
think she loathes me, Cole ? ” 

“ I don’t see how she can think much better 
of you than of the crime in which you’ve had a 
hand,” was my reply, made, however, with as 
much kindness as I could summon. “ The 
word I used was spoken in anger,” said I ; for 
his had disappeared; and he looked such a 
miserable, handsome dog as he stood there 
hanging his guilty head — in the room, I fan- 
cied, where he once had lain as a pretty, inno- 
cent child. 

“ Cole,” said he, “ I’d give twice my share of 
the damned stuff never to have put my hand 
to the plough ; but go back I can’t ; so there’s 
an end of it.” 


206 


A Deadlock 


“ I don’t see it,” said I. “ You say you didn’t 
go in for the gold ? Then give up your share ; 
the others’ll jump at it; and Eva won’t think 
the worse of you, at any rate.” 

“ But what’s to become of her if I drop out ? ” 

“ You and I will take her to her friends, or 
wherever she wants to go.” 

“ No, no ! ” he cried. “ I never yet deserted 
my pals, and I’m not going to begin.” 

“ I don’t believe you ever before had such 
pals to desert,” was my reply to that. “ Quite 
apart from my own share in the matter, it 
makes me positively sick to see a fellow like 
you mixed up with such a crew in such a game. 
Get out of it, man, get out of it while you can ! 
Now’s your time. Get out of it, for God’s 
sake ! ” 

I sat up in my eagerness. I saw him waver. 
And for one instant a great hope fluttered in 
my heart. But he shook his head ; his teeth 
met ; his face darkened. 

“ That’s the kind of rot that isn’t worth talk- 
ing, and you ought to know it,” said he. 
“ When I begin a thing I go through with it, 
though it lands me in hell, as this one will. I 
can’t help that. It’s too late to go back. I’m 
going on ; and you’re going with me, Cole, like 
a sensible chap ! ” 


207 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


I shook my head. 

“ Only on the one condition.” 

“ You-stick-to-that? ” he said, so rapidly 
that the words ran into one, so fiercely that his 
decision was as plain to me as my own. 

“ I do,” said I, and could only sigh when he 
made yet one more effort to persuade me, in a 
distress not less apparent than his resolution, 
and not less becoming in him. 

“ Consider, Cole, consider ! ” 

“ I have already done so, Rattray.” 

“ Murder is simply nothing to them ! ” 

“ It is nothing to me either.” 

“ Human life is nothing ! ” 

“ No ; it must end one day.” 

“ You won’t even give your word uncondi- 
tionally? ” 

“ No ; you know my condition.” 

He ignored it with a blazing eye, his hand 
upon the door. 

“ You prefer to die, then ? ” 

“ Infinitely.” 

“ Then die you may, and be damned to 
you ! ” 


208 


CHAPTER XVII 


WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT 

The door slammed. It was invisibly locked, 
and the key taken out. I listened for the last 
of an angry stride. It never even began. But 
after a pause the door was unlocked again, and 
Rattray re-entered. 

Without looking at me, he snatched the can- 
dle from the table on which it stood by the 
bedside, and carried it to a bureau at the oppo- 
site side of the room. There he stood a minute 
with his back turned, the candle, I fancy, on the 
floor. I saw him putting something in either 
jacket pocket. Then I heard a dull little snap, 
as though he had shut some small morocco 
case ; whatever it was, he tossed it carelessly 
back into the bureau ; and next minute he was 
really gone, leaving the candle burning on the 
floor 

I lay and heard his steps out of earshot, and 
they were angry enough now, nor had he given 
me a single glance. I listened until there was 
no more to be heard, and then in an instant I 
209 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


was off the bed and on my feet. I reeled a little, 
and my head gave me great pain, but greater 
still was my excitement. I caught up the 
candle, opened the unlocked bureau, and then 
the empty case which I found in the very 
front. 

My heart leapt ; there was no mistaking the 
depressions in the case. It was a brace of tiny 
pistols that Rattray had slipped into his jacket 
pockets. 

Mere toys they must have been in compari- 
son with my dear Deane-and-Adams ; that 
mattered nothing. I went no longer in dire 
terror of my life ; indeed, there was that in Rat- 
tray which had left me feeling fairly safe, in 
spite of his last words to me, albeit I felt his 
fears on my behalf to be genuine enough. His 
taking these little pistols (of course, there were 
but three chambers left loaded in mine) con- 
firmed my confidence in him. He would stick 
at nothing to defend me from the violence of 
his bloodthirsty accomplices. But it should 
not come to that. My legs were growing 
firmer under me. I was not going to lie there 
meekly without making at least an effort at self- 
deliverance. If it succeeded — the idea came to 
me in a flash — I would send Rattray an ultima- 
210 


When Thieves Fall Out 


turn from the nearest town ; and either Eva 
should be set instantly and unconditionally 
free, or the whole matter be put unreservedly in 
the hands of the local police. 

There were two lattice windows, both in the 
same immensely thick wall ; to my joy, I dis- 
covered that they overlooked the open premises 
at the back of the hall, with the oak-plantation 
beyond ; nor was the distance to the ground 
very great. It was the work of a moment to 
tear the sheets from the bed, to tie the two ends 
together and a third round the mullion by 
which the larger window was bisected. I had 
done this, and had let down my sheets, when a 
movement below turned my heart to ice. The 
night had clouded over. I could see nobody ; 
so much the greater was my alarm. 

I withdrew from the window, leaving the 
sheets hanging, in the hope that they also 
might be invisible in the darkness. I put out 
the candle, and returned to the window in great 
perplexity. Next moment I stood aghast — be- 
tween the devil and the deep sea. I still heard 
a something down below, but a worse sound 
came to drown it. An unseen hand was very 
quietly trying the door which Rattray had 
locked behind him. 


2 1 1 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Diablo ! ” came to my horrified ears, in a 
soft, vindictive voice. 

“ I told ye so,” muttered another ; “ the 
young swab’s got the key.” 

There was a pause, in which it would seem 
that Joaquin Santos had his ear at the empty 
keyhole. 

“ I think he must be slipping,” at last I 
heard him sigh. “ It was not necessary to 
awaken him in this world. It is a peety.” 

“ One kick over the lock would do it,” said 
Harris ; “ only the young swab’ll hear.” 

“ Not perhaps while he is dancing attendance 
on the senhora. Was it not good to send him 
to her ? If he does hear, well, his own turn will 
come the queecker, that is all. But it would 
be better to take them one at a time ; so keeck 
away, my friend, and I will give him no time to 
squil.” 

While my would-be murderers were holding 
this whispered colloquy, I had stood half-pet- 
rified by the open window ; unwilling to slide 
down the sheets into the arms of an unseen 
enemy, though I had no idea which of them it 
could be ; more hopeful of slipping past my 
butchers in the darkness, and so to Rattray and 
poor Eva ; but not the less eagerly looking for 


212 


When Thieves Fall Out 


some hiding-place in the room. The best that 
offered was a recess in the thick wall between 
the two windows, filled with hanging clothes : 
a narrow closet without a door, which would 
shelter me well enough if not too curiously in- 
spected. Here I hid myself in the end, after a 
moment of indecision which nearly cost me my 
life. The coats and trousers still shook in front 
of me when the door flew open at the first kick, 
and Santos stood a moment in the moonlight, 
looking for the bed. With a stride he reached 
it, and I saw the gleam of a knife from where 
I stood among the squire’s clothes ; it flashed 
over my bed, and was still. 

“ He is not ’ere ! ” 

“ He heard us, and he’s a hiding.” 

“ Make light, my friend, and we shall very 
soon see.” 

Harris did so. 

“ Here’s a candle,” said Santos ; “ light it, 
and watch the door. Perro mal dicto ! What 
have we here ? ” 

I felt certain he had seen me, but the candle 
passed within a yard of my feet, and was held 
on high at the open window. 

“ We are too late ! ” said Santos. “ He’s 
gone ! ” 


213 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Are you sure ? ” 

“ Look at this sheet.” 

“ Then the other swab knew of it, and we’ll 
settle with him.” 

“ Yes, yes. But not yet, my good friend — 
not yet. We want his asseestance in getting 
the gold back to the sea; he will be weeding 
enough to give it, now that his pet bird has 
flown; after that — by all mins. You shall cut 
his troth, and I will put one of ’is dear friend’s 
bullets in ’im for my own satisfaction.” 

There was a quick step on the stairs — in the 
corridor. 

“ I’d like to do it now,” whispered Harris ; 
“ no time like the present.” 

“ Not yet, I tell you!” 

And Rattray was in the room, a silver- 
mounted pistol in each hand ; the sight of these 
was a surprise to his treacherous confederates, 
as even I could see. 

“ What the devil are you two doing here ? ” 
he thundered. 

“We thought he was too quite,” said Santos. 
“ You percive the rizzon.” 

And he waved from empty bed to open win- 
dow, then held the candle close to the tied 
sheet, and shrugged expressively. 

214 


When Thieves Fall Out 


“You thought he was too quiet!” echoed 
Rattray with fierce scorn. “ You thought I 
was too blind — that’s what you mean. To tell 
me that Miss Denison wished to see me, and 
Miss Denison that I wished to speak to her! 
As if we shouldn’t find you out in about a min- 
ute! But a minute was better than nothing, 
eh ? And you’ve made good use of your min- 
ute, have you? You’ve murdered him, and 
you pretend he’s got out ? By God, if you have. 
I’ll murder you! I’ve been ready for this all 
night ! ” 

And he stood with his back to the window, 
his pistols raised, and his head carried proudly 
— happily — like a man whose self-respect was 
coming back to him after many days. Harris 
shrank before his fierce eyes and pointed bar- 
rels. The Portuguese, however, had merely 
given a characteristic shrug, and was now roll- 
ing the inevitable cigarette. 

“ Your common sense is almost as remark- 
able as your sense of justice, my friend,” said 
he. “ You see us one-, two, tree meenutes ago, 
and you see us now. You see the empty bed, 
the empty room, and you imagine that in one, 
two, tree meenutes we have killed a man and 
disposed of his body. Truly, you are very 

215 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


wise and just, and very loyal also to your 
friends. You treat a dangerous enemy as 
though he were your tween-brother. You let 
him escape — let him, I repit — and then you 
threaten to shoot those who, as it is, may pay 
for your carelessness with their lives. We 
have been always very loyal to you, Senhor 
Rattray. We have leestened to your advice, 
and often taken it against our better judg- 
ment. We are here, not because we think it 
wise, but because you weeshed it. Yet at the 
first temptation you turn upon us, you point 
your peestols at your friends/' 

“ I don't believe in your loyalty,” rejoined 
Rattray. “ I believe you would shoot me 
sooner than I would you. The only differ- 
ence would be that I should be shot in the 
back ! ” 

“ It is untrue,” said Santos, with immense 
emotion. “ I call the saints to witness that 
never by thought or word have I been disloyal 
to you ” — and the blasphemous wretch actu- 
ally crossed himself with a trembling, skinny 
hand. “ I have leestened to you, though you 
are the younger man. I have geeven way to 
you in everything from the moment we were 
so fullish as to set foot on this accursed coast ; 

216 


When Thieves Fall Out 


that also was your doeeng; and it will be your 
fault if ivil comes of it. Yet I have not com-* 
plained. Here in your own ’ouse you have 
been the master, I the guest. So far from 
plotting against you, show me the man who 
has heard me brith one treacherous word be- 
hind your back; you will find it deeficult, 
friend Rattray ; what do you say, captain ? ” 

“ Me ? ” cried Harris, in a voice bursting 
with abuse. And what the captain said may 
or may not be imagined. It cannot be set 
down. 

But the man who ought to have spoken — 
the man who had such a chance as few men 
have off the stage — who could have confound- 
ed these villains in a breath, and saved the 
wretched Rattray at once from them and from 
himself — that unheroic hero remained ignobly 
silent in his homely hiding-place. And, what 
is more, he would do the same again ! 

The rogues had fallen out; now was the 
time for honest men. They all thought I had 
escaped ; therefore they would give me a bet- 
ter chance than ever of still escaping; and I 
have already explained to what purpose I 
meant to use my first hours of liberty. That 
purpose I hold to have justified any ingrati- 
217 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


tude that I may seem now to have displayed 
‘ towards the man who had undoubtedly stood 
between death and me. Was not Eva Deni- 
son of more value than many Rattrays ? And 
it was precisely in relation with this pure 
young girl that I most mistrusted the squire : 
obviously then my first duty was to save Eva 
from Rattray, not Rattray from these traitors. 

Not that I pretend for a moment to have 
been the thing I never was: you are not so 
very grateful to the man who pulls you out of 
the mud when he has first of all pushed you in ; 
nor is it chivalry alone which spurs one to the 
rescue of a lovely lady for whom, after all, one 
would rather live than die. Thus I, in my 
corner, was thinking (I will say) of Eva first ; 
but next I was thinking of myself ; and Rat- 
tray’s blood be on his own hot head ! I hold, 
moreover, that I was perfectly right in all this ; 
but if any think me very wrong, a sufficient 
satisfaction is in store for them, for I was very 
swiftly punished. 

The captain’s language was no worse in 
character than in effect: the bed was bloody 
from my wounded head, all tumbled from the 
haste with which I had quitted it, and only too 
suggestive of still fouler play. Rattray 
218 


When Thieves Fall Out 


stopped the captain with a sudden flourish of 
one of his pistols, the silver mountings mak- 
ing lightning in the room ; then he called upon 
the pair of them to show him what they had 
done with me; and to my horror, Santos in- 
vited him to search the room. The invitation 
was accepted. Yet there I stood. It would 
have been better to step forward even then. 
Yet I cowered among his clothes until his own 
hand fell upon my collar, and forth I was 
dragged to the plain amazement of all three. 

Santos was the first to find his voice. 

“ Another time you will perhaps think twice 
before you spik, friend squire.” 

Rattray simply asked me what I had been 
doing in there, in a white flame of passion, and 
with such an oath that I embellished the truth 
for him in my turn. 

“ Trying to give you blackguards the slip,” 
said I. 

** Then it was you who let down the sheet ? ” 

“ Of course it was.” 

“ All right ! I’m done with you,” said he ; 
“ that settles it. I make you an offer. You 
won’t accept it. I do my best; you do your 
worst; but I’ll be shot if you get another 
chance from me ! ” 


219 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Brandy and the wine-glass stood where Rat- 
tray must have set them, on an oak stool be- 
side the bed ; as he spoke he crossed the room, 
filled the glass till* the spirit dripped, and 
drained it at a gulp. He was twitching and 
wincing still when he turned, walked up to 
Joaquin Santos, and pointed to where I stood 
with a fist that shook. 

“ You wanted to deal with him,” said Rat- 
tray ; “ you’re at liberty to do so. I’m only 
sorry I stood in your way.” 

But no answer, and for once no rings of 
smoke came from those shrivelled lips: the 
man had rolled and lighted a cigarette since 
Rattray entered, but it was burning unheeded 
between his skinny fingers. I had his atten- 
tion, all to myself. He knew the tale that I 
was going to tell. He was waiting for it ; he 
was ready for me. The attentive droop of his 
head ; the crafty glitter in his intelligent eyes ; 
the depth and breadth of the creased forehead ; 
the knowledge of his resource, the conscious- 
ness of my error, all distracted and confounded 
me so that my speech halted and my voice ran 
thin. I told Rattray every syllable that these 
traitors had been saying behind his back, but 
I told it all very ill ; what was worse, and made 


220 


When Thieves Fall Out 


me worse, I was only too well aware of my 
own failure to carry conviction with my words. 

“ And why couldn’t you come out and say 
so ? ” asked Rattray, as even I knew that he 
must. “ Why wait till now? ” 

“ Ah, why ! ” echoed Santos, with a smile 
and a shake of the head ; an alarming toler- 
ance, an ostentatious truce, upon his parch- 
ment face. And already he was sufficiently 
relieved to suck his cigarette alight again. 

“ You know why,” I said, trusting to bluff 
honesty with the one of them who was not 
rotten to the core : “ because I still meant es- 
caping.” 

“ And then what ? ” asked Rattray fiercely. 

“ You had given me my chance,” I said ; 
“ I should have given you yours.” 

“You would, would you? Very kind of 
you, Mr. Cole ! ” 

“ No, no,” said Santos ; “ not kind, but 
clever! Clever, spicious, and queeck-weeted 
beyond belif! Senhor Rattray, we have all 
been in the dark ; we thought we had fool to 
dil with, but what admirable knave the young 
man would make ! Such readiness, such re- 
source, with his tongue or with his peestol ; 
how useful would it be to us ! I am glad you 


221 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


have decided to live him to me, friend Rat- 
tray, for I am quite come round to your way 
of thinking. It is no longer necessary for him 
to die ! ” 

“ You mean that? ” cried Rattray keenly. 

“ Of course I min it. You were quite right. 
He must join us. But lie will when I talk to 
him.” 

I could not speak. I was fascinated by this 
wretch: it was reptile and rabbit with us. 
Treachery I knew he meant ; my death, for 
one ; my death was certain ; and yet I could not 
speak. 

“ Then talk to him, for God’s sake,” cried 
Rattray, “ and I shall be only too glad if you 
can talk some sense into him. I’ve tried, and 
failed.” 

“ I shall not fail,” said Santos softly. “ But 
it is better that he has a leetle time to think 
over it calmly ; better steel for ’im to slip upon 
it, as you say. Let us live ’im for the night, 
what there is of it ; time enough in the morn- 
ing.” 

I could hardly believe my ears ; still I knew 
that it was treachery, all treachery; and the 
morning I should never see. 

“ But we can’t leave him up here,” said Rat- 


222 


When Thieves Fall Out 


tray ; “ it would mean one of us watching him 
all night.” 

“ Quite so,” said Santos. “ I will tell you 
where we could live him, however, if you will 
allow me to wheesper one leetle moment.” 

They drew aside; and, as I live, I thought 
that little moment was to be Rattray’s last on 
earth. I watched, but nothing happened; on 
the contrary, both men seemed agreed, the 
Portuguese gesticulating, the Englishman 
nodding, as they stood conversing at the win- 
dow. Their faces were strangely reassuring. 
I began to reason with myself, to rid my mind 
of mere presentiment and superstition. If 
these two really were at one about me (I ar- 
gued) there might be no treachery after all. 
When I came to think of it, Rattray had been 
closeted long enough with me to awake the 
worst suspicions in the breasts of his compan- 
ions ; now that these were allayed, there might 
be no more bloodshed after all (if, for exam- 
ple, I pretended to give in), even though San- 
tos had not cared whose blood was shed a few 
minutes since. That was evidently the char- 
acter of the wretch : to compass his ends or to 
defend his person he would take life with no 
more compunction than the ordinary criminal 
223 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


takes money ; but (and hence) murder for mur- 
der’s sake was no amusement to him. 

My confidence was further restored by Cap- 
tain Harris ; ever a gross ruffian, with no re- 
finements to his rascality, he had been at the 
brandy-bottle after Rattray’s example ; and 
now was dozing on the latter’s bed, taking his 
watch below when he could get it, like the 
good seaman he had been. I was quite sorry 
for him when the conversation at the window 
ceased suddenly, and Rattray roused the cap- 
tain up. 

“ Watches aft! ” said he. “ We want that 
mattress ; you can bring it along, while I lead 
the way with the pillows and things. Come 
on, Cole ! ” 

“ Where to? ” I asked, standing firm. 

“ Where there’s no window for you to jump 
out of, old boy, and no clothes of mine for you 
to hide behind. You needn’t look so scared ; 
it’s as dry as a bone, as cellars go. And it’s 
past three o’clock. And you’ve just got to 
come.” 


224 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A MAN OF MANY MURDERS 

It was a good-sized wine-cellar, with very 
little wine in it ; only one full bin could I dis- 
cover. The bins themselves lined but two of 
the walls, and most of them were covered in 
with cobwebs, close-drawn like mosquito-cur- 
tains. The ceiling was all too low: torpid 
spiders hung in disreputable parlours, dead to 
the eye, but loathsomely alive at an involun- 
tary touch. Rats scuttled when we entered, 
and I had not been long alone when they re- 
turned to bear me company. I am not a nat- 
ural historian, and had rather face a lion with 
the right rifle than a rat with a stick. My 
jailers, however, had been kind enough to 
leave me a lantern, which, set upon the ground 
(like my mattress), would afford a warning, if 
not a protection, against the worst; unless I 
slept ; and as yet I had not lain down. 

The rascals had been considerate enough, 
more especially Santos, who had a new man- 
ner for me with his revised opinion of my 
225 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


character; it was a manner almost as courtly 
as that which had embellished his relations 
with Eva Denison, and won him my early re- 
gard at sea. Moreover, it was at the sugges- 
tion of Santos that they had detained me in 
the hall, for much-needed meat and drink, on 
the way down. Thereafter they had con- 
ducted me through the book-lined door of my 
undoing, down stone stairs leading to three 
cellar doors, one of which they had double- 
locked upon me. 

As soon as I durst I was busy with this 
door ; but to no purpose ; it was a slab of solid 
oak, hung on hinges as massive as its lock. It 
galled me to think that but two doors stood 
between me and the secret tunnel to the sea : 
for one of the other two must lead to it. The 
first, however, was all beyond me, and I very 
soon gave it up. There was also a very small 
grating which let in a very little fresh air : the 
massive foundations had been tunnelled in one 
place ; a rude alcove was the result, with this 
grating at the end and top of it, some seven 
feet above the earth floor. Even had I been 
able to wrench away the bars, it would have 
availed me nothing, since the aperture formed 
the segment of a circle whose chord was but 
226 


A Man of Many Murders 

a very few inches long. I had nevertheless a 
fancy for seeing the stars once more and feel- 
ing the breath of heaven upon my bandaged 
temples, which impelled me to search for that 
which should add a cubit to my stature. And 
at a glance I descried two packing-cases, 
rather small and squat, but the pair of them 
together the very thing for me. To my 
amazement, however, I could at first move 
neither one nor the other of these small boxes. 
Was it that I was weak as water, or that they 
were heavier than lead? At last I managed 
to get one of them in my arms — only to drop 
it with a thud. A side started ; a thin sprink- 
ling of yellow dust glittered on the earth. I 
fetched the lantern: it was gold-dust from 
Bendigo or from Ballarat. 

To me there was horror unspeakable, yet 
withal a morbid fascination, in the spectacle 
of the actual booty for which so many lives 
had been sacrificed before my eyes. Minute 
followed minute in which I looked at nothing, 
and could think of nothing, but the stolen bull- 
ion at my feet ; then I gathered what of the 
dust I could, pocketed it in pinches to hide 
my meddlesomeness, and blew the rest away. 
The box had dropped very much where I had 
227 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


found it; it had exhausted my strength none 
the less, and I was glad at last to lie down on 
the mattress, and to wind my body in Rat- 
tray’s blankets. 

I shuddered at the thought of sleep : the rats 
became so lively the moment I lay still. One 
ventured so near as to sit up close to the lan- 
tern ; the light showed its fat white belly, and 
the thing itself was like a dog begging, as big 
to my disgusted eyes. And yet, in the midst 
of these horrors (to me as bad as any that had 
preceded them), nature overcame me, and for 
a space my torments ceased. 

“ He is aslip,” a soft voice said. 

“ Don’t wake the poor devil,” said another. 

“ But I weesh to spik with ’im. Senhor 
Cole! Senhor Cole!” 

I opened my eyes. Santos looked of un- 
canny stature in the low yellow light, from my 
pillow close to the earth. Harris turned away 
at my glance ; he carried a spade, and began 
digging near the boxes without more ado, by 
the light of a second lantern set on one of 
them : his back was to me from this time on. 
Santos shrugged a shoulder towards the cap- 
tain as he opened a camp-stool, drew up his 
trousers, and seated himself with much de- 
liberation at the foot of my mattress. 

228 


A Man of Many Murders 

“ When you ’ave treasure,” said he, “the bet- 
ter thing is to bury it, Senhor Cole. Otfr 
young friend upstairs begs to deefer; but he 
is slipping; it is peety he takes such quantity 
of brandy! It is leetle wikness of you Eng- 
leesh ; we in Portugal never touch it, save as a 
liqueur ; therefore we require less slip. Friend 
squire upstairs is at this moment no better than 
a porker. Have I made mistake ? I thought 
it was the same word in both languages ; but 
I am glad to see you smile, Senhor Cole ; that 
is good sign. I was going to say, he is so fast 
aslip up there, that he would not hear us if we 
were to shoot each other dead ! ” 

And he gave me his paternal smile, benevo- 
lent, humorous, reassuring ; but I was no 
longer reassured ; nor did I greatiy care any 
more what happened to me. There is a point 
of last, as well as one of least resistance, and I 
had reached both points at once. 

“ Have you shot him dead ? ” I inquired, 
thinking that if he had, this would precipitate 
my turn. But he was far from angry; the 
parchment face crumpled into tolerant smiles ; 
the venerable head shook a playful reproval, 
as he threw away the cigarette that I am tired 
of mentioning, and put the last touch to a fresh 
one with his tongue. 


229 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ What question ! ” said he ; “ reelly, Sen- 
hor Cole! But you are quite right: I would 
have shot him, or cut his troth ” (and he 
shrugged indifference on the point), “ if it had 
not been for you ; and yet it would have been 
your fault ! I nid not explain ; the poseetion 
must have explained itself already; besides, 
it is past. With you two against us — but it is 
past. You see, I have no longer the excellent 
Jose. You broke his leg, bad man. I fear it 
will be necessary to destroy ’im.” Santos 
made a pause; then inquired if he shocked 
me. 

“ Not a bit,” said I, neither truly nor un- 
truly ; “ you interest me.” And that he did. 

“ You see,” he continued, “ I have not the 
respect of you Engleesh for ’uman life. We 
will not argue it. I have at least some respect 
for prejudice. In my youth I had myself such 
prejudices; but one loses them on the Zam- 
besi. You cannot expect one to set any value 
upon the life of a black nigger ; and when you 
have keeled a great many Kaffirs, by the lash, 
with the crocodiles, or what-not, then a white 
man or two makes less deeference. I ac- 
knowledge there were too many on board that 
sheep; but what was one to do? You have 
230 


A Man of Many Murders 

your Engleesh proverb about the dead men 
and the stories ; it was necessary to make clin 
swip. You see the result.” 

He shrugged again towards the boxes ; but 
this time, being reminded of them (I sup- 
posed), he rose and went over to see how Har- 
ris was progressing. The captain had never 
looked round ; neither did he look at Santos. 
“A leetle dipper,” I heard the latter say, “ and, 
perhaps, a few eenches — ” but I lost the last 
epithet. It followed a glance over the shoul- 
der in my direction, and immediately preced- 
ed the return of Santos to his camp-stool. 

“ Yes, it is always better to bury treasure,” 
said he once more ; but his tone was altered ; it 
was more contemplative ; and many smoke- 
rings came from the shrunk lips before an- 
other word; but through them all, his dark 
eyes, dull with age, were fixed upon me. 

“ You are a treasure ! ” he exclaimed at last, 
softly enough, but quickly and emphatically 
for him, and with a sudden and most diabolical 
smile. 

“ So you are going to bury me ? ” 

I had suspected it when first I saw the 
spade ; then not ; but since the visit to the hole 
I had made up my mind to it. 

231 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Bury you? No, not alive,” said Santos, 
in his playfully reproving tone. “ It would be 
necessary to deeg so dip ! ” he added through 
his few remaining teeth. 

“ Well,” I said, “ you’ll swing for it. That’s 
something.” 

Santos smiled again, benignantly enough 
this time : in contemplation also : as an artist 
may smile upon his work. / was his ! 

“ You live town,” said he ; “ no one knows 
where you go. You come down here ; no one 
knows who you are. Your dear friend squire 
locks you up for the night, but dreenks too 
much and goes .to slip with the key in his 
pocket ; it is there when he wakes ; but the 
preesoner, where is he ? He is gone, vanished, 
escaped in the night, and, like the base fabreec 
of your own poet’s veesion, he lives no trace 
— is it trace? — be’ind! A leetle earth is so 

easily bitten down ; a leetle more is so easily 
carried up into the garden ; and a beet of nice 
strong wire might so easily be found in a cel- 
lar, and afterwards in the lock! No, Senhor 
Cole, I do not expect to ’ang. My schims 
have seldom one seengle flaw. There was 
just one in the Lady Jermyn; there was — Sen- 
hor Cole! If there is one this time, and you 
232 


A Man of Many Murders 

will be so kind as to point it out, I will — I will 
run the reesk of shooting you instead of ” 

A pinch of his baggy throat, between the 
fingers and thumbs of both hands, foreshad- 
owed a cleaner end; and yet I could look at 
him ; nay, it was more than I could do not to 
look upon that bloodless face, with the two 
dull blots upon the parchment, that were never 
withdrawn from mine. 

“ No you won’t, messmate ! If it’s him or 
us for it, let a bullet do it, and let it do it quick, 
you bloody Spaniard ! You can’t do the other 
without me, and my part’s done.” 

Harris was my only hope. I had seen this 
from the first, but my appeal I had been keep- 
ing to the very end. And now he was leav- 
ing me before a word would come ! Santos 
had gone over to my grave, and there was 
Harris at the door ! 

“ It is not dip enough,” said the Portuguese. 

“ It’s as deep as I mean to make it, with you 
sittin’ there talkin’ about it.” 

And the door stood open. 

“ Captain ! ” I screamed. “ For Christ’s 
sake, captain ! ” 

He stood there, trembling, yet even now 
not looking my way. 


233 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Did you ever see a man hanged ? ” asked 
Santos, with a vile eye for each of us. “ I 
once hanged fifteen in a row ; abominable 
thifs. And I once poisoned nearly a hundred 
at one banquet; an untrustworthy tribe; but 
the hanging was the worse sight and the 
worse death. Heugh! There was one man 
— he was no stouter than you are, cap- 
tain ” 

But the door slammed; we heard the cap- 
tain on the stairs ; there was a rustle from the 
leaves outside, and then a silence that I shall 
not attempt to describe. 

And, indeed, I am done with this descrip- 
tion: as I live to tell the tale (or spoil it, if I 
choose) I will make shorter work of this par- 
ticular business than I found it at the time. 
Perverse I may be in old age as in my youth ; 
but on that my agony — my humiliating agony 
— I decline to dwell. I suffer it afresh as I 
write. There are the cobwebs on the ceiling, 
a bloated spider crawling in one : a worse mon- 
ster is gloating over me : those dull eyes of his, 
and my own pistol-barrel, cover me in the 
lamplight. The crucifix pin is awry in his 
cravat ; that is because he has offered it me to 
kiss. As a refinement (I feel sure) my re- 

234 


A Man of Many Murders 

volver is not cocked ; and the hammer goes up 
—up 

He missed me because a lantern was flashed 
into his eyes through the grating. He wasted 
the next ball in firing wildly at the light. And 
the last chamber's load became suddenly too 
precious for my person ; for there were many 
voices overhead ; there were many feet upon 
the stairs. 

Harris came first — head-first — saw me still 
living as he reeled — hurled himself upon the 
boxes and one of these into the hole — all far 
quicker than my pen can write it. The 
manoeuvre, being the captain’s, explained it- 
self : on his heels trod Rattray, with one who 
brought me to my feet like the call of silver 
trumpets. 

“ The house is surrounded,” says the squire, 
very quick and quiet ; “ is this your doing, 
Cole?” 

“ I wish it was,” said I ; “ but I can’t com- 
plain ; it’s saved my life.” And I looked at 
Santos, standing dignified and alert, my still 
smoking pistol in his hand. 

“ Two things to do,” says Rattray — “ I 
don’t care which.” He strode across the cel- 
lar and pulled at the one full bin ; something 
235 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


slid out, it was a binful of empty bottles, and 
this time they were allowed to crash upon the 
floor ; the squire stood pointing to a man-hole 
at the back of the bin. “ That’s one alter- 
native,” said he ; “ but it will mean leaving this 
much stuff at least,” pointing to the boxes, 
“ and probably all the rest at the other end. 
The other thing’s to stop and fight ! ” 

“ I fight,” said Santos, stalking to the door. 
“ Have you no more ammunition for me, 
friend Cole ? Then I must live you alive ; 
adios, senhor ! ” 

Harris cast a wistful look towards the man- 
hole, not in cowardice, I fancy, but in sudden 
longing for the sea, the longing of a poor devil 
of a sailor-man doomed to die ashore. I am 
still sorry to remember that Rattray judged 
him differently. 

“ Come on, skipper,” said he ; “ it’s all or 
none aboard the lugger, and I think it will be 
none. Up you go ; wait a second in the room 
above, and I’ll find you an old cutlass. I 
shan’t be longer.” He turned to me with a 
wry smile. “ We’re not half armed,” he said ; 
“ they’ve caught us fairly on the hop ; it should 
be fun! Good-bye, Cole; I wish you’d had 
another round for that revolver. Good-bye, 
Eva!” 


236 


A Man of Many Murders 

And he held out his hand to our love, who 
had been watching him all this time with eyes 
of stone; but now she turned her back upon 
him without a word. His face changed; the 
stormlight of passion and remorse played up- 
on it for an instant ; he made a step towards 
her, wheeled abruptly, and took me by the 
shoulder instead. 

“ Take care of her, Cole,” said he. “ What- 
ever happens — take care of her.” 

I caught him up at the foot of the stairs. I 
do not defend what I did. But I had more am- 
munition ; a few wadded bullets, caps, and 
powder-charges, loose in a jacket pocket ; and 
I thrust them into one of his, upon a sudden 
impulse, not (as I think) altogether unac- 
countable, albeit (as I have said) so indefen- 
sible. 

My back was hardly turned an instant. I 
had left a statue of unforgiving coldness. I 
started round to catch in my arms a half-faint- 
ing, grief-stricken form, shaken with sobs that 
it broke my heart to hear. I placed her on 
the camp-stool. I knelt down and comforted 
her as well as I could, stroking her hands, my 
arm about her heaving shoulders, with the 
gold-brown hair streaming over them. Such 
237 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


hair as it was! So much longer than I had 
dreamt. So soft — so fine — my soul swam 
with the sight and touch of it. Well for me 
that there broke upon us from above such a 
sudden din as turned my hot blood cold ! A 
wild shout of surprise ; an ensuing roar of de- 
fiance ; shrieks and curses ; yells of rage and 
pain ; and pistol-shot after pistol-shot as loud 
as cannon in the confined space. 

I know now that the battle in the hall was a 
very brief affair ; while it lasted I had no sense 
of time ; minutes or moments, they were (God 
forgive me!) some of the very happiest in all 
my life. My joy was as profound as it was 
also selfish and incongruous. The villains 
were being routed ; of that there could be no 
doubt or question. I hoped Rattray might 
escape, but for the others no pity stirred in my 
heart, and even my sneaking sympathy with 
the squire could take nothing from the joy 
that was in my heart. Eva Denison was free. 
I was free. Our oppressors would trouble us 
no more. W e were both lonely ; we were 
both young ; we had suffered together and for 
each other. And here she lay in my arms, 
her head upon my shoulder, her soft bosom 
heaving on my own ! My blood ran hot and 
238 


A Man of Many Murders 

cold by turns. I forgot everything but our 
freedom and my love. I forgot my sufferings, 
as I would have you all forget them. I am 
not to be pitied. I have been in heaven on 
earth. I was there that night, in my great 
bodily weakness, and in the midst of blood- 
shed, death, and crime. 

‘ “ They have stopped ! ” cried Eva sudden- 
ly. “ It is over ! Oh, if he is dead ! ” 

And she sat upright, with bright eyes start- 
ing from a deathly face. I do not think she 
knew that she had been in my arms at all : any 
more than I knew that the firing had ceased 
before she told me. Excited voices were still 
raised overhead ; but some sounded distant, 
yet more distinct, coming through the grating 
from the garden ; and none were voices that 
we knew. One poor wretch, on the other 
hand, we heard plainly groaning to his death ; 
and we looked in each other’s eyes with the 
same thought. 

“ That’s Harris,” said I, with, I fear, but lit- 
tle compassion in my tone or in my heart just 
then. 

“ Where are the others ? ” cried Eva pite- 
ously. 

“ God knows,” said I ; “ they may be done 
for, too.” 


239 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ If they are!” 

“ It’s better than the death they would have 
lived to die.” 

“ But only one of them was a wilful mur- 
derer ! Oh, Mr. Cole — Mr. Cole — go and see 
what has happened ; come back and tell me ! 
I dare not come. I will stay here and pray for 
strength to bear whatever news you may bring 
me. Go quickly. I will — wait — and pray ! ” 

So I left the poor child on her knees in that 
vile cellar, white face and straining hands up- 
lifted to the foul ceiling, sweet lips quivering 
with prayer, eyelids reverently lowered, and 
the swift tears flowing from beneath them, all 
in the yellow light of the lantern that stood 
burning by her side. How different a pict- 
ure from that which awaited me overhead ! 


240 


CHAPTER XIX 


MY GREAT HOUR 

The library doors were shut, and I closed 
the secret one behind me before opening the 
other and peering out through a wrack of blu- 
ish smoke ; and there lay Captain Harris, sure 
enough, breathing his last in the arms of one 
constable, while another was seated on the 
table with a very wry face, twisting a tourni- 
quet round his arm, from which the blood was 
dripping like rain-drops from the eaves. A 
third officer stood in the porch, issuing direc- 
tions to his men without. 

“ He’s over the wall, I tell you ! I saw him 
run up our ladder. After him every man of 
you — and spread ! ” 

I looked in vain for Rattray and the rest; 
yet it seemed as if only one of them had es- 
caped. I was still looking when the man in 
the porch wheeled back into the hall, and in- 
stantly caught sight of me at my door. 

“ Hillo ! here's another of them,” cried he. 


241 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ Out you come, young fellow! Your mates 
are all dead men.” 

“ They’re not my mates.” 

“ Never mind ; come you out and let’s have 
a look at you.” 

I did so, and was confronted by a short, 
thickset man, who recognized me with a 
smile, but whom I failed to recognise. 

“ I might have guessed it was Mr. Cole,” 
said he. “ I knew you were here somewhere, 
but I couldn’t make head or tail of you through 
the smoke.” 

“ I’m surprised that you can make head or 
tail of me at all,” said I. 

“ Then you’ve quite forgotten the inquis- 
itive parson you met out fishing? You see I 
found out your name for myself ! ” 

“ So it was a detective ! ” 

“ It was and is,” said the little man, nod- 
ding. “ Detective-Inspector Royds, if you’re 
any the wiser.” 

“ What has happened ? Who has es- 
caped ? ” 

“ Your friend Rattray ; but he won’t get 
far.” 

“ What of the Portuguese and the nigger? ” 

I forgot that I had crippled Jose, but re- 
242 


My Great Hour 

membered with my words, and wondered the 
more where he was. 

“ I’ll show you,” said Royds. “ It was the 
nigger let us in. We heard him groaning 
round at the back — who smashed his leg? 
One of our men was at that cellar grating; 
there was some of them down there ; we want- 
ed to find our way down and corner them, but 
the fat got in the fire too soon. Can you 
stand something strong? Then come this 
way.” 

He led me out into the garden, and to a 
tangled heap lying in the moonlight, on the 
edge of the long grass. The slave had fallen 
on top of his master ; one leg lay swathed and 
twisted; one black hand had but partially re- 
laxed upon the haft of a knife (the knife) that 
stood up hilt-deep in a blacker heart. And 
in the hand of Santos was still the revolver 
(my Deane-and-Adams) which had sent its 
last ball through the nigger’s body. 

“ They slipped out behind us, all but the one 
inside,” said Royds, ruefully ; “ I’m hanged if 
I know yet how it happened — but we were on 
them next second. Before that the nigger 
had made us hide him in the grass, but the old 
devil ran straight into him, and the one fired 
243 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


as the other struck. It’s the worst bit of luck 
in the whole business, and I’m rather disap- 
pointed on the whole. I’ve been nursing the 
job all this week ; had my last look round this 
very evening, with one of these officers, and 
only rode back for more to make sure of tak- 
ing our gentlemen alive. And we’ve lost three 
out of four of ’em, and have still to lay hands 
on the gold! I suppose you didn’t know 
there was any aboard ? ” he asked abruptly. 

“ Not before to-night.” 

“ Nor did we till the Devoren came in with 
letters last week, a hundred and thirty days 
out. She should have been in a month before 
you, but she got amongst the ice around the 
Horn. There was a letter of advice about the 
gold, saying it would probably go in the Lady 
Jermyn; and another about Rattray and his 
schooner, which had just sailed ; the young 
gentleman was known to the police out there.” 

“ Do you know where the schooner is ? ” 

“ Bless you, no, we’ve had no time to think 
about her ; the man had been seen about town, 
and we’ve done well to lay hands on him in the 
time.” 

“ You will do better still when you do lay 
hands on him,” said I, wresting my eyes from 
244 


My Great Hour 

the yellow dead face of the foreign scoundrel. 
The moon shone full upon his high forehead, 
his shrivelled lips, dank in their death agony, 
and on the bauble with the sacred device that 
he wore always in his tie. I recovered my 
property from the shrunken fingers, and so 
turned away with a harder heart than I ever 
had before or since for any creature of Al- 
mighty God. 

Harris had expired in our absence. 

“ He’s gone, sir,” said the constable in 
whose arms we had left him. 

" More’s the pity. Cut out at the back and 
help land the young gent, or we’ll have him 
giving us the slip too. He may double back, 
I’m watching out for that. Which way should 
you say he’d head, Mr. Cole ? ” 

“ Inland,” said I, lying on the spur of the 
moment, I knew not why. “ Try at the cot- 
tage where I’ve been staying.” 

“ We have a man posted there already. 
That woman is one of the gang, and we’ve got 
her safe. But I’ll take your advice, and have 
that side scoured whilst I hang about the 
place.” 

And he walked through the house, and out 
the back way, at the officer’s heels ; meanwhile 
245 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


the man with the wounded arm was swaying 
where he sat from loss of blood, and I had to 
help him into the open air before at last I was 
free to return to poor Eva in her place of loath- 
some safety. I had been so long, however, 
that her patience was exhausted, and as I re- 
turned to the library by one door, she entered 
by the other. 

“ I could bear it no longer. Tell me — the 
worst ! ” 

“ Three of them are dead.” 

“ Which three?” 

She had crossed to the other door, and 
would not have me shut it. So I stood be- 
tween her and the hearth, on which lay the 
captain’s corpse, with the hearthrug turned 
up on either side to cover it. 

“ Harris for one,” said I. “ Outside lie 
Jose and ” 

“ Quick! Quick!” 

“ Senhor Santos.” 

Her face was as though the name meant 
nothing to her. 

“ And Mr. Rattray?” she cried. “And 
Mr. Rattray ” 

“ Has escaped for the present. He seems 
to have cut his way through the police and got 
246 


My Great Hour 

over the wall by a ladder they left behind them. 
They are scouring the country — Miss Deni- 
son ! Eva ! My poor love !” 

She had broken down utterly in a second 
fit of violent weeping; and a second time I 
took her in my arms, and stood trying in my 
clumsy way to comfort her, as though she 
were a little child. A lamp was burning in 
the library, and I recognised the arm-chair 
which Rattray had drawn thence for me on the 
night of our dinner — the very night before! 
I led Eva back into the room, and I closed both 
doors. I supported my poor girl to the chair, 
and once more I knelt before her and took her 
hands in mine. My great hour was come at 
last : surely a happy omen that it was also the 
hour before the dawn. 

“ Cry your fill, my darling,” I whispered, 
with the tears in my own voice. “ You shall 
never have anything more to cry for in this 
world ! God has been very good to us. He 
brought you to me, and me to you. He has 
rescued us for each other. All our troubles 
are over ; cry your fill ; you will never have 
another chance so long as I live, if only you 
will let me live for you. Will you, Eva ? Will 
you? Will you? ” 


247 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


She drew her hands from mine, and sat up- 
right in the chair, looking at me with round 
eyes ; but mine were dim ; astonishment was 
all that I could read in her look, and on I went 
headlong, with growing impetus and passion. 

“ I know I am not much, my darling ; but 
you know I was not always what my luck, 
good and bad, has left me now, and you will 
make a new man of me so soon! Besides, 
God must mean it, or He would not have 
thrown us together amid such horrors, and 
brought us through them together still. And 
you have no one else to take care of you in the 
world! Won’t you let me try, Eva? Say 
that you will ! ” 

“ Then — you — love me ? ” she said slowly, 
in a low, awe-struck voice that might have 
told me my fate at once ; but I was shaking all 
over in the intensity of my passion, and for 
the moment it was joy enough to be able at 
last to tell her all. 

“ Love you ? ” I echoed. “ With every 
fibre of my being! With every atom of my 
heart and soul and body! I love you well 
enough to live to a hundred for you, or to die 
for you to-night ! ” 

“ Well enough to — give me up? ” she whis- 
pered. 


248 


My Great Hour 

I felt as though a cold hand had checked my 
heart at its hottest, but I mastered myself suf- 
ficiently to face her question and to answer it 
as honestly as I might. 

“ Yes! ” I cried; “ well enough even to do 
that, if it was for your happiness ; but I might 
be rather difficult to convince about that.” 

“ You are very strong and true,” she mur- 
mured. “ Yes, I can trust you as I have never 
trusted anybody else! But — how long have 
you been so foolish ? ” And she tried very 
hard to smile. 

“ Since I first saw you ; but I only knew it 
on the night of the fire. Till that night I re- 
sisted it like an idiot. Do you remember how 
we used to argue? I rebelled so against my 
love! I imagined that I had loved once al- 
ready and once for all. But on the night of 
the fire I knew that my love for you was dif- 
ferent from all that had gone before or would 
ever come again. I gave in to it at last, and 
oh ! the joy of giving in ! I had fought against 
the greatest blessing of my life, and I never 
knew it till I had given up fighting. What 
did I care about the fire? I was never hap- 
pier — until now! You sang through my 
heart like the wind through the rigging; my 
249 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


one fear was that I might go to the bottom 
without telling you my love. When I asked 
to say a few last words to you on the poop, it 
was to tell you my love before we parted, that 
you might know I loved you whatever came. 
I didn’t do so, because you seemed so fright- 
ened, poor darling! I hadn’t it in my heart 
to add to your distress. So I left you without 
a word. But I fought the sea for days to- 
gether simply to tell you what I couldn’t die 
without telling you. When they picked me 
up, it was your name that brought back my 
senses after days of delirium. When I heard 
that you were dead, I longed to die myself. 
And when I found you lived after all, the hor- 
ror of your surroundings was nothing to be 
compared with the mere fact that you lived; 
that you were unhappy and in danger was my 
only grief, but it was nothing to the thought 
of your death ; and that I had to wait twenty- 
four hours without coming to you drove me 
nearer to madness than ever I was on the hen- 
coop. That’s how I love you, Eva,” I con- 
cluded ; “ that’s how I love and will love you, 
for ever and ever, no matter what happens.” 

Those sweet grey eyes of hers had been 
fixed very steadily upon me all through this 
250 


My Great Hour 

outburst; as I finished they filled with tears, 
and my poor love sat wringing her slender 
fingers, and upbraiding herself as though she 
were the most heartless coquette in the coun- 
try. 

“ How wicked I am!” she moaned. “ How 
ungrateful I must be! You offer me the un- 
selfish love of a strong brave man. I cannot 
take it. I have no love to give you in return.” 

“ But some day you may,” I urged, quite 
happily in my ignorance. “ It will come. Oh, 
surely it will come, after all that we have gone 
through together ! ” 

She looked at me very steadily and kindly 
through her tears. 

“ It has come, in a way,” said she ; “ but it 
is not your way, Mr. Cole. I do love you for 
your bravery and your — love — but that will 
not quite do for either of us.” 

“ Why not ? ” I cried in an ecstasy. “ My 
darling, it will do for me ! It is more than I 
dared to hope for ; thank God, thank God, that 
you should care for me at all ! ” 

She shook her head. 

“ You do not understand,” she whispered. 

“ I do. I do. You do not love me as you 
want to love.” 


251 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


“ As I could love ” 

“ And as you will ! It will come. It will 
come. I’ll bother you no more about it now. 
God knows I can afford to .leave well alone ! 
I am only too happy — too thankful — as it is ! ” 

And indeed I rose to my feet every whit as 
joyful as though she had accepted me on the 
spot. At least she had not rejected me ; nay, 
she confessed to loving me in a way. What 
more could a lover want? Yet there was a 
dejection in her drooping attitude which dis- 
concerted me in the hour of my reward. And 
her eyes followed me with a kind of stony re- 
morse which struck a chill to my bleeding 
heart. 

I went to the door ; the hall was still empty, 
and I shut it again with a shudder at what I 
saw before the hearth, at all that I had forgot- 
ten in the little library. As I turned another 
door opened — the door made invisible by the 
multitude of books around and upon it — and 
young Squire Rattray stood between my love 
and me. 

His clear smooth skin was almost as pale as 
Eva’s own, but pale brown, the tint of rich 
ivory. His eyes were preternaturally bright. 
And they never glanced my way, but flew 
252 


My Great Hour 

' straight to Eva, and rested on her very hum- 
bly and sadly, as her two hands gripped the 
arms of the chair, and she leant forward in 
horror and alarm. 

“ How could you come back ? ” she cried. 
“ I was told you had escaped ! ” 

“ Yes, I got away on one of their horses.” 

“ I pictured you safe on board ! ” 

“ I very nearly was.” 

“ Then why are you here ? ” 

“ To get your forgiveness before I go.” 

He took a step forward ; her eyes and mine 
were riveted upon him ; and I still wonder 
which of us admired him the more, as he stood 
there in his pride and his humility, gallant and 
young, and yet shame-faced and sad. 

“ You risk your life — for my forgiveness? ” 
whispered Eva at last. 

“ Risk it? HI give myself up if you’ll take 
back some of the things you said to me — last 
night — and before.” 

There was a short pause. 

“ Well, you are not a coward, at all events ! ” 
“ Nor a murderer, Eva ! ” 

“ God forbid.” 

“ Then forgive me for everything else that 
I have been — to you ! ” 


253 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


And he was on his knees where I had knelt 
scarce a minute before; nor could I bear to 
watch them any longer. I believed that he 
loved her in his own way as sincerely as I did 
in mine. I believed that she detested him for 
the detestable crime in which he had been con- 
cerned. I believed that the opinion of him 
which she had expressed to his face, in my 
hearing, was her true opinion, and I longed to 
hear her mitigate it ever so little before he 
went. He won my sympathy as a gallant who 
valued a kind word from his mistress more 
than life itself. I hoped earnestly that that 
kind word would be spoken. But I had no 
desire to wait to hear it. I felt an intruder. I 
would leave them alone together for the last 
time. 

So I walked to the door, but, seeing a key 
in it, I changed my mind, and locked it on the 
inside. In the hall I might become the un- 
intentional instrument of the squire’s capture, 
though, so far as my ears served me, it was 
still empty as we had left it. I preferred to run 
no risks, and would have a look at the sub- 
terranean passage instead. 

“ I advise you to speak low,” I said, “ and 
not to be long. The place is alive with the 
police. If they hear you all will be up.” 

254 


My Great Hour 

Whether he heard me I do not know. I left 
him on his knees still, and Eva with her face 
hidden in her hands. 

The cellar was a strange scene to re-visit 
within an hour of my deliverance from that 
very torture-chamber. It had been some- 
thing more before I left it, but in it I could 
think only of the first occupant of the camp- 
stool. The lantern still burnt upon the floor. 
There was the mattress, still depressed where 
I had lain face to face with insolent death. 
The bullet was in the plaster ; it could not have 
missed by the breadth of many hairs. In the 
corner was the shallow grave, dug by Harris 
for my elements. And Harris was dead. And 
Santos was dead. But life and love were 
mine. 

I would have gone through it all again ! 

And all at once I was on fire to be back in 
the library ; so much so, that half a minute at 
the man-hole, lantern in hand, was enough for 
me ; and a mere funnel of moist brown earth 
— a terribly low arch propped with beams — as 
much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean 
conduit between Kirby House and the sea. 
But I understand that the curious may trav- 
erse it for themselves to this day on payment 
of a very modest fee. 


255 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


As for me, I returned as I had come after 
(say) five minutes’ absence ; my head full once 
more of Eva, and of impatient anxiety for the 
wild young squire’s final flight ; and my heart 
still singing with the joy of which my beloved’s 
kindness seemed a sufficient warranty. Poor 
egotist ! Am I to tell you what I found when 
I came up those steep stairs to the chamber 
where I had left him on his knees to her? Or 
can you guess ? 

He was on his knees no more, but he held 
her in his arms, and as I entered he was kiss- 
ing the tears from her wet flushed cheek. Her 
eyelids drooped ; she was pale as the dead 
without, so pale that her eyebrows looked ab- 
normally and dreadfully dark. She did not 
cling to him. Neither did she resist his 
caresses, but lay passive in his arms as though 
her proper paradise was there. And neither 
heard me enter ; it was as though they had for- 
gotten all the world but one another. 

“ So this is it,” said I very calmly. I can 
hear my voice as I write. 

They fell apart on the instant. Rattray 
glared at me, yet I saw that his eyes were dim. 
Eva clasped her hands before her, and looked 
me steadily in the face. But never a word. 

256 


My Great Hour 

“ You love him ? ” I said sternly. 

The silence of consent remained unbroken. 

“ Villain as he is ? ” I burst out. 

And at last Eva spoke. 

“ I loved him before he was one,” said she. 
“ We were engaged.” 

She looked at him standing by, his head 
bowed, his arms folded ; next moment she was 
very close to me, and fresh tears were in her 
eyes. But I stepped backward, for I had had 
enough. 

“ Can you not forgive me ? ” 

“ Oh, dear, yes.” 

“ Can’t you understand? ” 

“ Perfectly,” said I. 

“ You know you said ” 

“ I have said so many things ! ” 

“ But this was that you — you loved me well 
enough to — give me up.” 

And the silly ego in me — the endless and in- 
corrigible I — imagined her pouting for a with- 
drawal of those brave words. 

“ I not only said it,” I declared, “ but I 
meant every word of it.” 

None the less had I to turn from her to hide 
my anguish. I leant my elbows on the nar- 
row stone chimney-piece, which, with the 
257 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

grate below and a small mirror above, formed 
an almost solitary oasis in the four walls of 
books. In the mirror I saw my face; it was 
wizened, drawn, old before its time, and mere- 
ly ugly in its sore distress, merely repulsive in 
its bloody bandages. And in the mirror also 
I saw Rattray, handsome, romantic, auda- 
cious, all that I was not, nor ever would be, and 
I “ understood ” more than ever, and loathed 
my rival in my heart. 

I wheeled round on Eva. I was not going 
to give her up — to him. I would tell her so 
before him — tell him so to his face. But she 
had turned away; she was listening to some 
one else. Her white forehead glistened. 
There were voices in the hall. 

“ Mr. Cole 1 Mr. Cole ! Where are you, 
Mr. Cole ? ” 

I moved over to the locked door. My hand 
found the key. I turned round with evil tri- 
umph in my heart, and God knows what upon 
my face. Rattray did not move. With lifted 
hands the girl was merely begging him to go, 
by the door that was open, down the stair. He 
shook his head grimly. With an oath I was 
upon them. 

“ Go, both of you ! ” I whispered hoarsely. 

258 


My Great Hour 

“ Now — while you can — and I can let you. 
Now! Now!” 

Still Rattray hung back. 

I saw him glancing wistfully at my great re- 
volver lying on the table under the lamp. I 
thrust it upon him, and pushed him towards 
the door. 

“ You go first. She shall follow. You will 
not grudge me one last word? Yes, I will 
take your hand. If you escape — be good to 
her!” 

He was gone. Without, there was a voice 
still calling me; but now it sounded over- 
head. 

“ Good-bye, Eva,” I said. “ You have not 
a moment to lose.” 

Yet those divine eyes lingered on my ugli- 
ness. 

“ You are in a very great hurry,” said she, 
in the sharp little voice of her bitter moments. 

“ You love him ; that is enough.” 

“ And you, too ! ” she cried. “ And you, 
too!” 

And her pure warm arms were round my 
neck; another instant, and she would have 
kissed me, she! I know it. I knew it, then. 
But it was more than I would bear. As a 
259 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


brother ! I had heard that tale before. Back 
I stepped again, all the man in me rebelling. 

“ That’s impossible,” said I rudely. 

“ It isn’t. It’s true. I do love you — for 
this!” 

I wonder how I looked ! 

“ And I mayn’t say good-bye to you,” she 
whispered. “ And — and I love you — for 
that!” 

“ Then you had better choose between us,” 
said I. 



260 


CHAPTER XX 


THE STATEMENT OF FRANCIS RATTRAY 

In the year 1858 I received a bulky packet 
bearing the stamp of the Argentine Republic, 
a realm in which, to the best of my belief, I 
had not a solitary acquaintance. The super- 
scription told me nothing. In my relations 
with Rattray his handwriting had never come 
under my observation. Judge then of my 
feelings when the first thing I read was his 
signature at the foot of the last page. 

For five years I had been uncertain whether 
he was alive or dead. I had heard nothing of 
him from the night we parted in Kirby Hall. 
All I knew was that he had escaped from Eng- 
land and the English police ; his letter gave no 
details of the incident. It was an astonishing 
letter; my breath was taken on the first close 
page; at the foot of it the tears were in my 
eyes. And all that part I must pass over with- 
out a word. I have never shown it to man or 
woman. It is sacred between man and man. 

But the letter possessed other points of in- 
261 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

terest — of almost universal interest — to which 
no such scruples need apply ; for it cleared up 
certain features of the foregoing narrative 
which had long been mysteries to all the 
world ; and it gave me what I had tried in vain 
to fathom all these years, some explanation, or 
rather history, of the young Lancastrian’s 
complicity with Joaquin Santos in the foul en- 
terprise of the Lady Jermyn. And these 
passages I shall reproduce word for word; 
partly because of their intrinsic interest ; partly 
for such new light as they may throw on this 
or that phase of the foregoing narrative ; and, 
lastly, out of fairness to (I hope) the most gal- 
lant and most generous youth who ever 
slipped upon the lower slopes of Avernus. 

Wrote Rattray: — 

“ You wondered how I could have thrown 
in my lot with such a man. You may wonder 
still, for I never yet told living soul. I pre- 
tended I had joined him of my own free will. 
That was not quite the case. The facts were 
as follows. 

“ In my teens (as I think you know) I was 
at sea. I took my second mate’s certificate at 
twenty, and from that to twenty-four my voy- 
ages were far between and on my own account. 

262 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

I had given way to our hereditary passion for 
smuggling. I kept a ‘ yacht * in Morecambe 
Bay, and more French brandy than I knew 
what to do with in my cellars. It was exciting 
for a time, but the excitement did not last. In 
1851 the gold fever broke out in Australia. I 
shipped to Melbourne as third mate on a 
barque, and I deserted for the diggings in the 
usual course. But I was never a successful 
digger. I had little luck and less patience, 
and I have no doubt that many a good haul 
has been taken out of claims previously aban- 
doned by me ; for of one or two I had the 
mortification of hearing while still in the 
Colony. I suppose I had not the tempera- 
ment for the work. Dust would not do for 
me — I must have nuggets. So from Bendigo 
I drifted to the Ovens, and from the Ovens to 
Ballarat. But I did no more good on one 
field than on another, and eventually, early in 
1853, I cast up in Melbourne again with the 
intention of shipping home in the first vessel. 
But there were no crews for the homeward- 
bounders, and while waiting for a ship my lit- 
tle stock of gold dust gave out. I became 
destitute first — then desperate. Unluckily for 
me, the beginning of ’53 was the hey-day of 
263 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


Captain Melville, the notorious bushranger. 
He was a young fellow of my own age. I de- 
termined to imitate his exploits. I could 
make nothing out there from an honest life; 
rather than starve I would lead a dishonest 
one. I had been born with lawless tenden- 
cies ; from smuggling to bushranging was an 
easy transition, and about the latter there 
seemed to be a gallantry and romantic swag- 
ger which put it on the higher plane of the 
two. But I was not born to be a bushranger 
either. I failed at the very first attempt. I 
was outwitted by my first victim, a thin old 
gentleman riding a cob at night on the Geelong 
road. 

“ ‘ Why rob me ? * said he. 4 1 have only 
ten pounds in my pocket, and the punishment 
will be the same as though it were ten thou- 
sand/ 

“ ‘ I want your cob/ said I (for I was on 
foot) ; 4 I’m a starving Jack, and as I can’t get 
a ship I’m going to take to the bush/ 

“ He shrugged his shoulders. 

“ 4 To starve there ? ’ said he. ‘ My friend, it 
is a poor sport, this bushranging. I have 
looked into the matter on my own account. 
You not only die like a dog, but you live like 
264 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

one too. It is not worth while. No crime is 
worth while under five figures, my friend. A 
starving Jack, eh ? Instead of robbing me of 
ten pounds, why not join me and take ten 
thousand as your share of our first robbery? 
A sailor is the very man I want ! ’ 

“ I told him that what I wanted was his cob, 
and that it was no use his trying to hoodwink 
me by pretending he was one of my sort, be- 
cause I knew very well that he was not ; at 
which he shrugged again, and slowly dis- 
mounted, after offering me his money, of 
which I took half. He shook his head, tell- 
ing me I was very foolish, and I was coolly 
mounting (for he had never offered me the 
least resistance), with my pistols in my belt, 
when suddenly I heard one cocked behind me. 

“ ‘ Stop ! ’ said he. ‘ It’s my turn ! Stop, 
or I shoot you dead ! * The tables were 
turned, and he had me at his mercy as com- 
pletely as he had been at mine. I made up 
my mind to being marched to the nearest po- 
lice-station. But nothing of the kind. I had 
misjudged my man as utterly as you mis- 
judged him a few months later aboard the 
Lady Jermyn. He took me to his house on the 
outskirts of Melbourne, a weather-board 
265 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


bungalow, scantily furnished, but comfortable 
enough. And there he seriously repeated the 
proposal he had made me off-hand in the road. 
Only he put it a little differently. Would I go 
to the hulks for attempting to rob him of five 
pounds, or would I stay and help him commit 
a robbery, of which my share alone would be 
ten or fifteen thousand? You know which I 
chose. You know who this man was. I said 
I would join him. He made me swear it. 
And then he told me what his enterprise was : 
there is no need for me to tell you ; nor indeed 
had it taken definite; shape at this time. Suf- 
fice it that Santos had wind that big consign- 
ments of Australian gold were shortly to be 
shipped home to England; that he, like my- 
self, had done nothing on the diggings, where 
he had looked to make his fortune, and out of 
which he meant to make it still. 

“ It was an extraordinary life that we led in 
the bungalow, I the guest, he the host, and 
Eva the unsuspecting hostess and innocent 
daughter of the house. Santos had failed on 
the fields, but he had succeeded in making 
valuable friends in Melbourne. Men of posi- 
tion and of influence spent their evenings on 
our verandah, among others the Melbourne 
266 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

agent for the Lady Jermyn, the likeliest vessel 
then lying in the harbour, and the one to which 
the first consignment of gold-dust would be 
entrusted if only a skipper could be found to 
replace the deserter who took you out. San- 
tos made up his mind to find one. It took him 
weeks, but eventually he found Captain Har- 
ris on Bendigo, and Captain Harris was his 
man. More than that, he was the man for the 
agent; and the Lady Jermyn was once more 
made ready for sea. Now began the compli- 
cations. Quite openly, Santos had bought 
the schooner Spindrift , freighted her with 
wool, given me the command, and vowed that 
he would go home in her rather than wait any 
longer for the Lady Jermyn. At the last mo- 
ment he appeared to change his mind, and I 
sailed alone as many days as possible in ad- 
vance of the ship, as had been intended from 
the first; but it went sorely against the grain 
when the time came. I would have given 
anything to have backed out of the enterprise. 
Honest I might be no longer ; I was honestly 
in love with Eva Denison. Yet to have 
backed out would have been one way of los- 
ing her for ever. Besides, it was not the first 
time I had run counter to the law, I who came 
267 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

of a lawless stock; but it would be the first 
time I had deserted a comrade or broken faith 
with one. I would do neither. In for a 
penny, in for a pound. 

“ But before my God I never meant it to 
turn out as it did, though I know that my 
moral responsibility is but little if any the less 
on that account. Yet I was never a consent- 
ing party to wholesale murder, whatever else 
I was. The night before I sailed, Santos and 
the captain were aboard with me till the small 
hours. They promised me that every soul 
should have every chance; that nothing but 
unforeseen accident could prevent the boats 
from making Ascension again in a matter of 
hours ; that as long as the gig was supposed to 
be lost with all hands, nothing else mattered. 
So they promised, and that Harris meant to 
keep his promise I fully believe. That was 
not a wanton ruffian; but the other would 
spill blood like water, as I told you at the hall, 
and as no man now knows better than your- 
self. He was notorious even in Portuguese 
Africa on account of his atrocious treatment 
of the blacks. It was a favourite boast of his 
that he once poisoned a whole village ; and that 
he himself tampered with the Lady Jermyn’s 
268 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

boats you can take my word, for I have heard 
him describe how he left it to the last night, 
and struck the blows during the applause at 
the concert on the quarter-deck. He said it 
might have come out about the gold in the gig, 
during the fire. It was safer to run no risks. 

“ The same thing came into play aboard the 
schooner. Never shall I forget the horror of 
that voyage after Santos came aboard ! I had 
a crew of eight hands all told, and two he 
brought with him in the gig. Of course they 
began talking about the gold; they would 
have their share or split when they got ashore ; 
and there was mutiny in the air, with the stew- 
ard and the quarter-master of the Lady Jer- 
myn for ring-leaders. Santos nipped it in the 
bud with a vengeance! He and Harris shot 
every man of them dead, and two who were 
shot through the heart they hashed and 
dressed and set adrift to rot in the gig with 
false papers ! God knows how we made Ma- 
deira ; we painted the old name out and a new 
name in, on the way ; and we shipped a Portu- 
guese crew, not a man of whom could speak 
English. ^We shipped them aboard the 
Duque de' Monde jo’s yacht Braganza; the 
schooner Spindrift had disappeared from the 
269 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


face of the waters for ever. And with the 
men we took in plenty of sour claret and cigar- 
ettes ; and we paid them well ; and the Portu- 
guese sailor is not inquisitive under such con- 
ditions. 

“ And now, honestly, I wished I had put a 
bullet through my head before joining in this 
murderous conspiracy; but retreat was im- 
possible, even if I had been the man to draw 
back after going so far; and I had a still 
stronger reason for standing by the others to 
the bitter end. I could not leave our lady to 
these ruffians. On the other hand, neither 
could I take her from them, for (as you know) 
she justly regarded me as* the most flagrant 
ruffian of them all. It was in me and through 
me that she was deceived, insulted, humbled, 
and contaminated ; that she should ever have 
forgiven me for a moment is more than I can 
credit or fathom to this hour. . . . So there 
we were. She would not look at me. And I 
would not leave her until death removed me. 
Santos had been kind enough to her hitherto ; 
he had been kind enough (I understand) to her 
mother before her. It was only in the execu- 
tion of his plans that he showed his Napole- 
onic disregard for human life ; and it was pre- 
270 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

cisely herein that I began to fear for the girl 
I still dared to love. She took up an attitude 
as dangerous to her safety as to our own. She 
demanded to be set free when we came to land. 
Her demand was refused. God forgive me, 
it had no bitterer opponent than myself ! And 
all we did was to harden her resolution ; that 
mere child threatened us to our faces, never 
shall I forget the scene! You know her 
spirit : if we would not set her free, she would 
tell all when we landed. And you remember 
how Santos used to shrug? That was all he 
did then. It was enough for me who knew 
him. For days I never left them alone to- 
gether. Night after night I watched her cabin 
door. And she hated me the more for never 
leaving her alone ! I had to resign myself to 
that. 

“ The night we anchored in Falmouth Bay, 
thinking then of taking our gold straight to 
the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky dig- 
gers — that night I thought would be the last 
for one or other of us. He locked her in her 
cabin. He posted himself outside on the settee. 
I sat watching him across the table. Each had 
a hand in his pocket, each had a pistol in that 
hand, and there we sat, with our four eyes 
271 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


locked, while Harris went ashore for papers. 
He came back in great excitement. What 
with stopping at Madeira, and calms, and the 
very few knots we could knock out of the 
schooner at the best of times, we had made a 
seven or eight weeks’ voyage of it from Ascen- 
sion — where, by the way, I had arrived only a 
couple of days before the Lady Jermyn , though 
I had nearly a month’s start of her. Well, 
Harris came back in the highest state of ex- 
citement : and well he might : the papers were 
full of you, and of the burning of the Lady Jer- 
myn! 

“ Now mark what happened. You know, 
of course, as well as I do ; but I wonder if you 
can even yet realise what it was to us ! Our 
prisoner hears that you are alive, and she turns 
upon Santos and tells him he is welcome to 
silence her, but it will do us no good now, as 
you know that the ship was wilfully burnt, and 
with what object. It is the single blow she 
can strike in self-defence ; but a shrewder one 
could scarcely be imagined. She had talked 
to you, at the very last; and by that time she 
did know the truth. What more natural than 
that she should confide it to you? She had 
had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of 
272 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

us; and you may imagine our consternation 
on hearing that she had told you all she knew ! 
From the first we were never quite sure 
whether to believe it or not. That the papers 
breathed no suspicion of foul play was neither 
here nor there. Scotland Yard might have 
seen to that. Then we read of the morbid re- 
serve which was said to characterise all your 
utterances concerning the Lady Jermyn. What 
were we to do ? What we no longer dared to 
do was to take our gold-dust straight to the 
Bank. What we did, you know. 

“ We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and 
landed the gold as we Rattrays had landed 
lace and brandy from time immemorial. 
We left Eva in charge of Jane Braithwaite, 
God only knows how much against my will, 
but we were in a corner, it was life or death 
with us, and to find out how much you knew 
was a first plain necessity. And the means we 
took were the only means in our power ; nor 
shall I say more to you on that subject than I 
said five years ago in my poor old house. 
That is still the one part of the whole con- 
spiracy of which I myself am most ashamed. 

“ And now it only remains for me to tell you 
why I have written all this to you, at such 
273 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 

great length, so long after the event. My wife 
wished it. The fact is that she wants you to 
think better of me than I deserve ; and I — yes 
— I confess that I should like you not to think 
quite as ill of me as you must have done all 
these years. I was villain enough, but do not 
think I am unpunished. I am an outlaw from 
my country. I am morally a transported felon. 
Only in this no-man’s land am I a free man ; 
let me but step across the border and I am 
worth a little fortune to the man who takes me. 
And we have had a hard time here, though not 
so hard as I deserved; and the hardest part 
of all. . . ” 

But you must guess the hardest part : for the 
letter ended as it began, with sudden talk of his 
inner life, and tentative inquiry after mine. 
In its entirety, as I say, I have never shown it 
to a soul ; there was just a little more that I 
read to my wife (who could not hear enough 
about his); then I folded up the letter, and 
even she has never seen the passages to which 
I allude. 

And yet I am not one of those who hold that 
the previous romances of married people 
should be taboo between them in after life. 


274 


The Statement of Francis Rattray 

On the contrary, much mutual amusement, of 
an innocent character, may be derived from a 
fair and free interchange upon the subject ; and 
this is why we, in our old age (or rather in 
mine), find a still unfailing topic in the story 
of which Eva Denison was wayward heroine 
and Frank Rattray the nearest approach to a 
hero. Sometimes these reminiscences lead to 
an argument; for it has been the fate of my 
life to become attached to argumentative per- 
sons. I suppose because I myself hate argu- 
ing. On the day that I received Rattray’s let- 
ter we had one of our warmest discussions. I 
could repeat every word of it after forty years. 

“ A good man does not necessarily make a 
good husband,” I innocently remarked. 

“ Why do you say that ? ” asked my wife, 
who never would let a generalisation pass un- 
challenged. 

“ I was thinking of Rattray,” said I. “ The 
most tolerant of judges could scarcely have de- 
scribed him as a good man five years ago. 
Yet I can see that he has made an admirable 
husband. On the whole, and if you can’t be 
both, it is better to be the good husband ! ” 

It was this point that we debated with so 
much ardour. My wife would take the oppo- 
275 


Dead Men Tell No Tales 


site side ; that is her one grave fault. And I 
must introduce personalities ; that, of course, 
is among the least of mine. I compared my- 
self with Rattray, as a husband, and (with some 
sincerity) to my own disparagement. I 
pointed out that he was an infinitely more fas- 
cinating creature, which was no hard saying, 
for that epithet at least I have never earned. 
And yet it was the word to sting my wife. 

“ Fascinating, perhaps ! ” said she. “ Yes, 
that is the very word ; but — fascination is not 
love!” 

And then I went to her, and stroked her hair 
(for she had hung her head in deep distress), 
and kissed the tears from her eyes. And I 
swore that her eyes were as lovely as Eva 
Denison’s, that there seemed even more gold 
in her glossy brown hair, that she was even 
younger to look at. And at the last and crafti- 
est compliment my own love looked at me 
through her tears, as though some day or other 
she might forgive me. 

“ Then why did you want to give me up to 
him ? ” said she. 


THE END 


276 


"Mr. Homung’s books are stories pure and simple, ex- 
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kindly. The plot is always well managed, the telling 
is lively, with no waste of irrelevant episode, and the 
untying is sure to be left to the last. ’ » 

—New York Evening Post. 

V— 

BOOKS BY E. W. HORNUNG 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers 


The Amateur Cracksman 

J2mo, $1.25 

CHAPTER HEADINGS 

I.— The Ides of March V.— Wilful Murder 

II.— A Costume Piece VI.— Nine Points of the Law 

HI.— Gentlemen and Players VII.— The Return Match 

IV,— Le Premier Pas VIII.— The Gift of the Emperor 

44 This Raffl.es is a pleasant scoundrel of sound 
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BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG 


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Some Persons Unknown 

\2mo, $1.25 
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CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS, Publishers 
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